Better late than never: Uber Eats adds Apple Pay option

Almost conspicuous by its absence, Apple Pay is finally an option in the Uber Eats food delivery app — after five years of being a way to pay for Uber's separate ride-sharing service.

In choosing to use Apple Pay, Uber Eats customers can make the payment through the iPhone FaceID or TouchID directly in the Uber Eats app, rather than filling out billing information, the company revealed in a statement to customers on Wednesday.

Brent Lewin/Bloomberg

"Security and privacy are at the core of Apple Pay," Uber senior product manager Mithat Ayok wrote in the statement. Rather than actual card numbers being made available to merchants, Apple Pay delivers "a unique device account number that is assigned, encrypted and securely stored in the secure element on your device," Ayok said.

Apple Pay for Uber Eats over the next few weeks is first launching in the U.S., Belgium, Canada, France, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, the U.K., and United Arab Emirates.

In addition to credit cards, debit cards and PayPal, Uber Eats and Uber ride sharing added the Venmo P2P service as an option last year.

Apple Pay is an option in other food service apps like Starbucks, Dunkin, Chipotle and Panera, and is also common in various other apps like Lyft, Groupon, Fandango, Airbnb, Hotel Tonight, Etsy, Staples and Instacart.