Because of slack buyer interest and other obstacles facing mobile payments in the U.S., Apple and other companies must inject new features and inducements to boost adoption.

Apple is expected to announce at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), which starts Monday, new technology to combine customer rewards with its existing Apple Pay mobile payments service. That service launched last October.

The technology would allow customers to automatically get coupons, rewards, loyalty points and special offers from a specific retailer — or from Apple itself — applied when a purchase is made from an NFC-ready iPhone or Apple Watch.

Google recently announced at Google I/O that its upcoming Android Pay service would do something similar by combining rewards with payments when its service launches later this year alongside the older Google Wallet system.

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