Apple Pay Coming to Best Buy

Best Buy customers can now tap into Apple Pay when making purchases via the mobile app.

Available now in the Apple App Store, the free update is currently limited to iPhone 6 and 6 Plus users.

Best Buy will begin accepting Apple Pay in its U.S. stores later this year; a specific date was not revealed.

"Today's consumers have many different ways to spend their money," the electronics seller said in a news release. "And we want to give our customers as many options as possible in how they pay for goods and services at Best Buy."

The announcement is notable because Best Buy has signed on for the Merchant Customer Exchange, an organization that is prepping its own mobile payment solution, dubbed CurrentC. In October, CVS and Rite Aid ditched support for Apple Pay because of their allegiance to MCX.

In a statement, Scott Rankin, MCX's chief operating officer, said that "Best Buy remains a strong MCX partner and supporter of the CurrentC initiative."

MCX said it was not at liberty to disclose the specifics of its Best Buy deal. "However, while all MCX merchants do agree to exclusivity, those provisions are designed to expire and as such as are limited in both time and scope," Rankin said.

During a Monday evening earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook touched briefly on Apple Pay, announcing the Best Buy deal and saying that "we're seeing great momentum with Apple Pay."

Cook also pointed to Discover, which on Monday announced a deal with Apple to offer U.S. cardmembers access to the mobile payment service starting this fall.

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Users will be able to add their credit or debit card to Apple Pay, then buy good and services at participating retailers with their iPhone 6, 6 Plus, and Apple Watch; the service also works with iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 for in-app purchases.

Plenty of iPhone users will be able to tap into Apple Pay—Cupertino said last night that it sold 61 million iPhones during the second quarter, in addition to the 74.5 million it sold during the holiday quarter.

Cook also said Apple is "thrilled" with the initial response to Apple Watch, but did not reveal any specific sales data.

Apple Pay support, meanwhile, is Best Buy's latest mobile enhancement, launching ahead of this year's grand opening of a technology innovation office in Seattle. Expected open in late spring, the South Lake Union-based center will focus on mobile development, private cloud, and omnichannel-application development.