Apple’s Venmo competitor is built into iMessage

Apple was rumored to be building its own competitor to services like Venmo and Paypal, and today at WWDC the company confirmed it was expanding the Apple Pay empire. Senior VP of software Craig Federighi announced that Apple Pay would come to iMessage with iOS 11. You can send money to anyone in the default messages app who is also running iOS 11, and you of course use your thumbprint to authenticate the transaction.

If you receive money, it’ll go on something called an Apple Pay cash card. What’s not clear is whether or not you can sync that card back to a bank account. Apple will certainly have more details about Apple Pay for iMessage once its website has updated with the details on iOS 11. We do know that Apple Pay for messages will work on the Apple Watch as well the iPhone.

Federighi showed a quick demo of Apple Pay in iOS11 on stage, and it’s pretty basic. When you open the Apple Pay iMessage app, you can either request or send money and just tap a large box to enter the full amount. Hit send and then authenticate with your fingerprint and you’re good to go.

Get all the latest news from WWDC 2017 here!