Apple Launches 'Apple Pay'; Tim Cook Says 'It Will Forever Change The Way We Buy'

Apple Pay has arrived on Tuesday. The payment service that, according to Apple CEO Tim Cook, "will forever change the way we buy."

According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple Pay comes built in with the two other products announced during the unveiling which are the new versions of the iPhone and the Apple watch.

The new payment service method introduced by Apple will reportedly allow users to ditch their credit cards and instead use their phones or watches in paying for purchases by swiping them at sensors in checkout counters.

The simple way of swiping to pay for purchases appears to impose a threat but the new iPhone 6, which carries the mobile payment service, reportedly requires a thumbprint scan in order to authenticate payments.

While Apple Pay positioned itself as the best way to pay for purchases without using cash or credit card, many other platforms have already offered the same kind of service.

There was a Square Wallet app which allowed users to pay for their purchases at partner merchants by giving their name. There is also Isis Wallet by AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile.

What sets Apple apart in the game, however, is the number of users of its products.

According to Time magazine's Jacob Davidson, "most mobile payment companies run into the problem of scale."

He explained the challenge of introducing a mobile payment system and how Apple reportedly differs from others. "It's hard to get merchants to adopt a new technology if they aren't sure a lot of their customers will us it, and the mobile payments market has been too fractured to accumulate a critical mass of users. Enter Apple, and the roughtly 400 million credit cards that are tied to its iTunes service. That's quadruple the amount of payment information Amazon holds."

Apple Pay will initially be available in the United States. It has partnered with credit card companies MasterCard, Visa and American Express and will reportedly be working with more than 22,000 merchants including McDonald's and Macy's.