• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, October 17, 2014

Apple’s long-awaited mobile payment system launches Monday.

That means anyone with an iPhone 6 and the desire to pay can search for a place equipped to accept the payments and pay using their phone.

This is pretty much what the formerly-known-as-Isis Softcard did some time ago.

With great fanfare, the then-Isis proudly announced the launch of its payment system.

All you had to do was go to the phone store, get a new SIM card at a store that had one, find someone at the store who knew what you were talking about, download the payment app and then search endlessly for a place where it worked.

But that was a launch by an entity owned by Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile, about as far as you can get from an Apple launch.

Apple lined up an army of participants including financial institutions, credit card companies and merchants well in advance of launch.

Apple Pay can even be used at McDonald’s drive-through locations. Courtesy of 9to5Mac, which got hold of the McDonald’s employee training document on Apple Pay, here’s how that will occur:

• Guest presents phone to make payment.
• On tender menu, select ‘Credit Debit’ button. Message will appear to swipe card.
• Hold cashless device out window, red NFC reader toward guest.
• Guest puts their phone to the NFC reader.
• On the reader, the customer will see 4 lights and hear a beep to signal payment is completed.
• Register will show approved message. Return device back inside DT booth.

The great irony is that now I find many, many places where Softcard works perfectly and seamlessly, even if the cashiers know nothing about it.

Any mobile payment launch takes time to work its way through the system, which includes not only the technology to be widely deployed but also for the consumer behavior to be commonly accepted.

For Apple Pay, the period we are now in is the calm before the calm.

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