Mercator LabsThe Expansion of Apple Pay: Digital Payments at the Federal Level

Apple CEO Tim Cook recently announced at the latest cybersecurity summit that Apple Pay would become available at the Federal level beginning in September, allowing consumers to pay admission into National Parks with Apple’s digital payment system. This announcement by Tim Cook additionally included a note that the elderly and U.S. veterans will be able to leverage Apple Pay for Social Security and benefits, respectively, by enabling Apple Pay as a form of federal payment.

Social Security has, for the most part, been delivered as a check to recipients, while only more recently allowing for direct deposit, DirectExpress or GSA SmartPay cards. There are more than 55 million folks receiving Social Security benefits in the U.S., which totals north of $70 billion a month. Now, more than 70% of folks receiving Social Security are over the age of 65 so the total percentage of the pool that will switch to digital payments will be quite low. But even 1% of that total through Apple Pay is $700 million a month. Let alone early adopters of the payment tool not on Social Security.

This latest announcement is yet another step in the direction of bringing digital payments more into the main stream. This expansion of Apple Pay is something we won’t see the trends taking shape until the latter half of 2015 but foundational partnerships such as the one between Apple and the Federal Government will help forge more paths to bringing digital payments to more users.