It’s already a big day for fans of Apple’s flagship iPhone smartphone, as new models like the iPhone 5S and the 5C hit stores and go on sale via Apple’s website. But as buyers line up outside Apple stores all around the country, current iPhone owners still have something new to look forward to. According to the Verge, Google Wallet, a new money management application from the search engine giant, is debuting today for iOS.

Whether or not Google Wallet – which offers services not unlike those provided by PayPal – can become a successful and enduring stable in the average app-user’s library remains to be seen. The application seeks to be a legitimate replacement for the physical wallet and boasts features like credit, gift, and loyalty card storage in an effort to make that goal more viable. In addition, the Google Wallet application allows users to transfer money from their accounts to others. In essence, if enough stores adopted receivers for the application, Google’s hopes of becoming the modern tech version of the old leather-and-plastic wallet set-up could actually be realistic.

However, the app has not exactly experienced smooth sailing thus far. Google Wallet hit Android phones first – obviously, given Google’s ownership of the platform – but was only compatible with phones boasting NFC (or Near Field Communication). NFC has been prevalent on some smartphones, such as the Samsung Galaxy S3/S4, for well over a year now, but is not yet standard across all models. The feature allows users to share data by holding their phones near one another.

In all fairness, the NFC requirement, while it limited the usefulness of Google Wallet for many users, did make sense. The theory was that stores would adopt Google Wallet as a payment method and have an NFC receiver hooked up to their cash register that would then complete phone transactions virtually. In essence, it would be an innovation on the auxiliary credit card scanner.

N0w that NFC has been banished from the Google Wallet concept, it isn’t precisely clear how users will be able to complete transactions at actual stores. And while the program still works just fine for online shopping, its most innovative aspects have more or less been stripped away.

Ditching the NFC requirement did allow Google to do one thing right, however: expand to iOS. None of Apple’s iPhones have NFC capability, and Google will certainly need the Apple portion of the smartphone market if the Wallet app is going to make much of a splash.