Apple Pay might be officially released next month, but unofficially Apple is already testing Apple Pay “in the wild” on unreleased iOS devices, Bank Innovation has learned.

With iOS 8’s release yesterday, many iOS users have been wondering when the new Apple Pay feature will be available on their devices. The “in the wild” tests indicate that it will be sooner rather than later that Apple Pay will be made available widely.

The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus have been in the hands of a few reviewers, but Apple is reportedly testing the Apple Pay feature in new devices out in the open. Many merchants have the necessary equipment to process Apple Pay transactions. For example, the new payment mechanism has been tested at McDonald’s (and its drive-thrus), Starbucks, and a number of other local chains, sources close to the retailers told Bank Innovation.

And while people have been testing Apple Pay, it doesn’t look like developers are among them. On the Stripe API development forums this week, developers expressed at least a bit of frustration that they won’t be able to demo Apple Pay until they get an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus.

Apple Pay wasn’t in yesterday’s initial iOS 8 launch, with the company saying in its media event that the feature would be added in October. However, developers are typically granted early access to iOS beta’s via the Apple developer website and it would not make sense for Apple to roll out such a massive feature that involves so many other players without a bit of forewarning. We understand that developers en masse will get access to the Apple Pay beta.

This will presumably take place in early October — which our sources tell us is now a firmer time frame. While our sources didn’t confirm whether this would be a public or beta release, it seems as though Apple will be releasing Apple Pay incrementally through a beta release to give developers more time to work on the new payment method. We would expect this to be welcome news to Stripe developers, for example.

We’ve also heard that Apple is still adding features to Apple Pay, as well. Apparently, one such feature might be notifications on merchant devices to verify transactions using Apple Pay. A notification would “pop up” on a merchant device for confirmation of transactions, whereupon merchants could “OK” them. This would make the payment experience — for both the customer and merchant — even better.

For such a hotly anticipated feature (remember: Apple spent quite a bit of time talking about Apple Pay last week), a slow roll out to eliminate any hindrances pre-public release makes a lot of sense. No one wants another Maps fiasco, after all.