Double click of iPhone X’s Side button will confirm Apple Pay transaction

iPhone X will have an elongated Power/Lock button on its side. They’re calling it the Side button and you’ll use it for things like Siri, Wallet, Apple Pay and more.

Jeffrey Grossman, a New York-based developer and co-founder of confidential messaging app Confide, has encountered code strings in the leaked iOS 11 GM suggesting a double-click of the Side button will confirm a pending Apple Pay transaction (like on Apple Watch).

Sifting through the GM build, he’s been able to confirm that iPhone X’s sophisticated facial recognition system based on depth-sensing 3D sensors works with Apple Pay. That doesn’t mean you’ll need to hold up the phone in front of your face every time you use Apple Pay.

Because it’s twice as fast as Touch ID, works from oblique angles and can sense when you’re looking at the device, Face ID will “just work” with Apple Pay. All you’ll need to do to confirm that transaction is click the Side button twice quickly, Jeffrey wrote on Twitter today.

This should work for Apple Store purchases as well.

The developer speculated, based on his code discoveries, that Face ID might be coming to iPad and iPod touch as well but that may not necessarily be the case—at least for iPod touch—because those code strings are almost certainly in there for future-proofing.

To naysayers: Brazilian developer Guilherme Rambo‏ has also acknowledged on Twitter today that the software does support Face ID for Apple Pay.

Cue the “less convenient than Touch ID” comments in 3, 2, 1…