Apple pushed back the US launch of a person-to-person payment tool, which will allow users to make money transfers through iMessage, until a future update of its new operating system.

The feature, which was scheduled to be launched alongside its iOS 11 platform, will see Apple go head-to-head with the likes of PayPal’s Venmo and Facebook in offering payments through social media and chat channels.

iOS 11 went live yesterday and supplied many of the upgrades promised at the company’s June developer conference, but omitted the Apple Pay Cash service.

In a statement on its website, Apple said the service would be “coming this fall” to iPhones and watches – the reason for the delay was not  disclosed.

Following the unveiling of the Apple Pay person-to-person (P2P) transaction upgrade, PayPal CEO Dan Schulman dismissed the smartphone giant’s challenge as limited by a lack of payment infrastructure.

In addition to so-called social payments, offered on a range of popular chat and community platforms, the US’s traditional finance sector is also eyeing the P2P space as a potential opportunity.

Last week a consortium of US banks launched Zelle Pay – a standalone app version of a service already available through its members’ standard banking apps. The platform allows instant cash transfers to be made to customers of other institutions.