Despite earlier reports to the contrary, it looks like Apple Pay will not be coming to Subway restaurants when it launches in a few weeks. Tuesday morning, Subway announced that it had made an agreement with Softcard as their preferred method to purchase food with mobile phones. Unfortunately for Apple and its loyalists, this means that the restaurant chain will not be compatible with Apple Pay, at least not right away.

Softcard will go into practice on Oct. 1. The Near Field Communications-based payment service was set up by major cellular providers AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless.  The mobile payment service was formerly known as ISIS Wallet. Softcard now offers an app that supports mobile payments across more than 80 mobile device and comes preloaded on more than 30 smart devices.

Softcard functions in a similar manner to Apple Pay. Customers bring their NFC-enabled and supported mobile devices to tap a payment terminal at their local Subway restaurant in order to pay for their food. The program went pilot in 2013 and will now enter upwards of 26,000 Subway locations around the U.S. soon. 

Those hoping that they will still be able to use their iPhone 6 with Softcard are out of luck; Apple has confirmed NFC is restricted to only the Apple Pay service for at least the next year. That means that those with iPhones are stuck paying for their sandwiches the old fashioned way.

All is not lost for Apple fans, however. Softcard CEO Michael Abbott said in a Sept. 9 blog post that the company is "working with Apple to enable Softcard on the iPhone in 2015... using a secure SIM-based hardware solution."

Beyond the ability to let you pay for an item on the go, Softcard also has a built-in rewards program that gives incentives to smartphone consumers to use the service. Subway customers who load the rewards onto their card will automatically activate the rewards card into the app.

As part of a major push for the service, Softcard users will get $1 back for every purchase that they make that is over $1 at Subway. The caveats are that American Express cards must be used for the rewards to activate and that the deal officially ends on Dec. 31.

Apple is hoping to make a major splash in the world of mobile payments when it releases Apple Pay services in direct competition with Softcard on Sept. 17.