Apple’s digital wallet service will be available for transactions with the federal government, such as entry fees for national parks, later this year, Apple CEO Tim Cook said Friday.
The collaboration between Apple and the Obama administration was announced at the White House’s cybersecurity summit at Stanford University, where Cook touted his company’s commitment to user privacy.
{mosads}ApplePay, also a mobile payment service, will be accepted by a variety of government entities, Cook said. He did not give further examples.
Cook was one of the few top-tier technology CEOs who attended the summit. The chief executives of Facebook, Google and Yahoo all declined invitations from the White House, a sign of the tensions between the administration and Silicon Valley over National Security Agency spying.
ApplePay is a tokenized, encrypted service that Cook described as safer than other mobile payment platforms. The service aims for higher security by generating a unique code that stands in for a buyer’s credit number during a financial transaction.
Apple, Visa, Mastercard and others are also working to make ApplePay available for users of federal payment cards such as GSA SmartPay cards, the administration stated in a memo.