iOS 16.1 Could Let Users Delete Apple’s Wallet App
- Laurent Giret
- Aug 24, 2022
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The Apple Wallet app could be the next inbox app on iOS that iPhone users are allowed to delete. According to 9to5Mac, the code for the first iPadOS 16.1 beta Apple released yesterday suggests that the Wallet app will be deletable on iOS 16.1.
“Code seen by 9to5Mac makes it clear that the Wallet app has become “deletable” with iOS 16.1. Unsurprisingly, some features like Apple Pay won’t work without the Wallet app. In this case, users will see a message telling them to ‘Download the Wallet app from the App Store’,” the report reads.
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To be clear, iOS 16.1 isn’t available in beta yet, only iPadOS 16.1 beta 1 and iOS 16.0 beta 7 are as of yesterday. Anyway, iOS and iPadOS share a lot of the same code, which is how 9to5Mac found out about Apple possibly making Wallet an optional app on iOS 16.1.
In recent months, Apple received criticism from the European Union for making Apple Pay, which is integrated with the Wallet app, the only way to use contactless payments on iPhones. Apple claimed that these restrictions makes the company’s NFC technology more secure, though Apple may have no choice but to open up its walled garden in the long run.
There has been some progress already on recent iOS 16 betas, with Apple adding Apple Pay support on third-party browsers such as Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. However, there’s still a long way to go until iPhone users are allowed to use alternative contactless payment solutions on their devices.