Apple Inc. keeps giving new meaning to the term "fashionably late." Once again, the company has garnered global headlines and rapturous applause for introducing features and service long after everyone else.
That might be a good thing when it comes to making purchases with your phone. Such "digital wallets" have been around for years, but who uses them? I have, once or twice, and found them uniformly lame. Perhaps the new Apple payment technology unveiled on Tuesday will finally crack the code. I'll let you know after Sept. 19, when the new iPhone 6 with Apple Pay goes on sale.
But will consumers trust Apple Pay? Just days after iPhone photos of naked Hollywood stars were stolen and posted on the Internet, how many of us will trust the company with our most sensitive financial data?
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And while Apple Pay appears simpler to use than any of its rivals, plastic credit cards are equally simple. They're also being upgraded to make them far more secure. And you don't have to recharge them every night.
Still, Apple and a host of rival firms are convinced that we're all waiting for the ideal digital wallet. Google Inc. has a version called Google Wallet. Three of the four biggest cellphone carriers — Verizon Wireless, AT&T Inc., and T-Mobile US Inc. — offer a system with the unfortunate name Isis. For obvious reasons, the consortium just announced a name change; they're going with Softcard.
There's also a Boston company called LevelUp that uses a barcode displayed on your phone's screen to represent your credit card number. The merchant scans the barcode and you've paid.
LevelUp works fine. But there is the hassle of fumbling with the phone, launching the app, and punching in a PIN number for security, before you can make a payment. It's easier to swipe a Visa or MasterCard. Besides, not that many merchants accept LevelUp payments, even in the company's hometown.
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At least LevelUp was easy to install. I had to visit an AT&T retail store to get an Isis/Softcard account. My Android phone already contained a "near-field communication" chip, like the one the iPhone 6 will use to talk to payment terminals in retail stores. But Isis also required a new SIM card with an encrypted, highly secure chip to process financial transactions.
And I couldn't use my Bank of America debit card with Isis. I had to set up an American Express Co. debit card called Serve, and transfer money to it. It was too much work.
But it paid off when I used Isis to get a candy bar at Walgreens. The process was relatively painless, but I did have to peck in a PIN number to make the purchase.
Google Wallet made it a bit more difficult to satisfy my candy craving. I had to enter a PIN on my phone screen, and again on the payment terminal screen, before the deal went down. That's a lot of trouble for a 99-cent Twix bar.
Apple promises to make the process far less tortuous. The company laid the groundwork last year, when it added a superb fingerprint scanner to the iPhone 5s, good for unlocking the phone or buying from the App Store. Apple Pay will use fingerprint scans, not passwords or PINs. Just touch the fingerprint scanner on the phone while holding it next to the checkout terminal. It should be as easy as swiping a credit card.
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And more secure, too, according to Apple. All financial data is encrypted, stored on the phone, and never transmitted to Apple. Instead of sending your card number, the iPhone transmits a unique transaction code for each purchase, which is then used for debiting your payment account. Even if the code is intercepted, it can never be used again. That's the theory, anyway.
And Trey Ford, global security strategist for the Boston computer security firm Rapid7, said the use of transaction codes, instead of card numbers, should cut down on the theft of financial data.
"The market's ripe for this," Ford said. "I'm convinced that Apple has the resources, the relationships, and the wherewithal to build this correctly."
But even if Apple Pay is more secure than today's credit cards, what about tomorrow's? By October 2015, the United States will adopt EMV, the card standard used in the rest of the world. EMV credit cards replace the familiar magnetic strip with an encrypted microchip. Ford said these new cards will be as secure as Apple Pay, and I figure they'll be almost as easy to use.
With the arrival of EMV technology, Apple Pay advocates may have lost their strongest argument. Being fashionably late doesn't always pay off.
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at hiawatha.bray@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeTechLab.