iOS 8 scans credit cards with iPhone camera for online payments

By Malarie Gokey June 6, 2014

Apple iOS 8 press 12 — Image used with permission by copyright holder

The only bad part about buying things online is entering your credit card information over and over and over again. Sure, autofill exists to avoid this problem, but if you’re leery of letting the Internet save all your credit card information, you have to enter all those digits, your name, address, expiration date, and more every time you buy online. Apple has yet to break into mobile payments, but now it looks like it is trying to make the process easier with iOS 8.

According to 9to5 Mac, Apple added a new feature to Safari that alerts you that you have the option to scan your credit card information, using the new iOS 8 camera app on your iPhone, and see it magically appear in the online payment form. iOS 8 uses optical character recognition to discern each number on your credit card and then delivers the text to Safari.

It seems that Safari will automatically notice when you need to enter your credit card number and will issue a pop-up window to suggest using the new scanner on your iOS 8 device. Luckily, this new feature should work on any website, because it is a built-in feature of Safari and iOS 8, rather than an idea dependent upon incorporation by website developers. The credit card scan option is just another example of Apple’s efforts to establish a deeper connection between iOS and OS X devices.

This new feature should make paying online much easier, but it still isn’t a fully-fledged mobile payment system like Google Wallet or PayPal. It looks like we’ll have to wait longer for Apple to get to that project.

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