SALT LAKE CITY — E-Scooter rentals will be more accessible soon, courtesy of Apple and Bird.
Jennifer Bailey — Apple’s vice president for internet services — announced the company is currently working with Bird to enable Apple Pay for scooter rentals, according to The Verge.
Bailey, who was speaking at the 2019 Transact conference, said the functionality would be possible through near-field communication stickers. Bird scooters are available in Salt Lake City and require users to check in with an app to unlock the electric scooter. The new system would allow iPhone owners to just tap their phone against the NFC tag to get things going.
Here are some other interesting points:
- Apple is also working to enable Apple Pay for parking meters and Bonobos, a subsidiary of Walmart that sells men’s clothes.
- The new system would cut out a lot of extra steps to rent scooters, but a new system for locating scooters outside the map wasn’t mentioned.
- Anyone interested in using Apple Pay to rent a bird scooter needs to have an iPhone 7, 8 or X, since they have NFC chips built in.
- Payment will be processed through Bird’s website, which will automatically open when users tap their phones on the NFC tag.
- There's no word on when the NFC functionality would launch besides "soon."
I previously reported that Bird announced a new private scooter rental system, which could come to Salt Lake if the trial runs in San Francisco and Barcelona go well.