A Child Uses A iPad Air Tablet At The Apple Store.
A child uses an iPad Air tablet at the Apple store in San Francisco, California November 1, 2013. Reuters

One major step up feature that the iPad Air 2 and the iPad Mini 3 could deliver on release date is to become a key player once Apple Pay is operational starting on October 2014.

The exact role that the iOS 8-powered tablet will play in Apple's upcoming mobile payment service is receiver of the virtual credit card transaction, which according to Business Insider would make the Apple Pay wholly digital.

Like the iPhone 6 before it, the 2014 iPads - likely to come in the 9.7-inch second iPad Air, the 7.9-inch Mini 3 and 12.9-inch iPad Pro - will be equipped with Touch ID fingerprint scanner and near-field communication chip or NFC.

The latter two, according to Apple, are two important components of cash-free shopping transactions using iDevices. With the features packed with the three iPads, mobile payment within the Apple ecosystem is smooth and secured as the tech giant will cover both ends of the process, added Business Insider on its report.

Users with the iPhone 6 will send the payment while shop owners will receive the electronic cash with the iPad terminal.

The same feature will surely make any of the 2014 iPads attractive to business-focused users, said the same report.

And to further attract those in the enterprise sector, it would help the iPad to add the following features:

A cover that doubles as physical keyboard

Apple CEO Tim Cook had recently claimed that 80 per cent of his work was performed on the bigger iPad Air. Perhaps that can easily jump to 100 per cent if the tech giant could include an accessory that offers robust protection for the device while promoting productivity at the same time.

This smart tool needs to have a true keyboard element because nothing really beats real typing when the object is to produce while on the go but with ease and efficiency still present.

Multitasking features

This is not impossible for Apple as iOS 8 has been rumoured to support multitasking functions that in the Android and Windows mobile platforms mean the ability to view and work on two applications at the same time.

On the hardware side, a recent G4Games report had claimed that Apple will bump up the component muscles of the upcoming iPads. The Air 2, said the tech blog site, is up for a 2GB of RAM upgrade while the iPad Pro will be boosted by an A8X processor.

The news, while unconfirmed, clearly indicated that Apple is beefing up the next iPad capabilities - software- and hardware-wise - that should convince users of all kinds to upgrade once the kits become available.

The iPad Air 2 release date, per the latest rumours, is immediately happening after its October 2014 introduction while the iPad Mini 3 and iPad Pro will not come out until early 2015.