Legit or sht?
Androider here.
Let’s see…a payment process that gives Apple control of higher end and higher income customers - aka people who spend a lot, and do it quite often…doesn’t sound like a recipe for sht.
^ And the koolaid sippin slave to the Apple strikes again.
CVS snubbed their nose at it.
From the perspective of a stockholder, then yes it sounds good. From the perspective of everyone else though?
Well, first things first - Apple Pay is just the Apple branded version of NFC. Apple will store your credit card or bank account number in their system, then communicate payment information with retailers who have installed NFC devices. Yes, Google and other companies have adopted this system for a while, but some credit must be afforded to Apple for not entering this market until the time is a little bit more ripe, so that the technology does not just appear dead on arrival, like Google Wallet.
Is this going to change payments as we know it? My opinion is that it will be a slow trickle until some plateau, not like a big dam bursting of adoption that Apple followers seem to hope. PayPal was a fantastic idea (instant online payments to anybody via internet), but it never really caught on outside some specific online applications.
The issue with NFC is that carrying credit cards is just so convenient. We are never going to do away with wallets until the DMV issues phone compatible driver’s licenses and ATMs dispense cash using NFC. Plus, credit cards still offer airline miles and points that Apple Pay and Google Wallet do not. On top of that, the likelihood of an Apple Pay transaction is still reliant on the combined likelihood of an iPhone 6 user (older iPhones do not have NFC chips) meeting an NFC merchant. At this point, there are not that many of either, so absolute observed growth will be slow; some larger adoption rate must precede the accelerated growth like in the middle of the S curve.
If NFC picks up, it will only be a matter of time before other parties (mobile providers?) start to offer their own version of this service. Given that Apple Pay will probably be minutely more expensive, retailers might favor cheaper services, like restaurants favor Visa over American Express.
So, my opinion is, the idea has potential, but widespread success is far from certain. The actual weighting of real life factors will matter as much as whether the technology and idea are good.
i remember they announced this when the 5 came out and being quite impressed at the time. Presumably you just scan your phone on the sensors already around the place for contactless credit/debit cards.
Possibly a mistake to not launch it straight away when releasing the 6. I imagine that was unavoidable for 1 reason or another. Might need more of a marketing push
I think ohai summarized it pretty well. It’s a cool idea but that’s it for now. I don’t think my phone is NFC compatible, not that I really care. I always have my physical credit cards and it’s just so easy. Plus the US has already shown that it doesn’t want to spend the money to upgrade the payment infrastructure to support chip and pin credit cards which is arguably more important than supporting NFC payments.
I would imagine touchless payment is way open for more hacking.
According to Walmart and some other major retailers, sht. So is Google Wallet as far as they are concerned though.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/walmart-war-against-apple-over-104457286.html
Since Apple only cares about rich people though, I guess it doesn’t matter if Walmart won’t accept it.
I was talking to a bank about this recently. They were appalled by Apple’s fees, which I can’t recall. I imagine a lower margin service will come along, as these retailers don’t want to pay that fee
I used Google Wallet a few times with my Nexus 4 last year. I wasn’t really into it. A CC was easier to swipe and there weren’t any technological benefits to making NFC-payments that I could discern (except some higher security). Apple Pay looks like the same crap.
I wound up getting a new phone since and got one without NFC. I don’t miss it.
NFC technology will eventually win out. Not sure if Apple Pay or Google Wallet specifically will be selected.
MCX sounds like collusion to me but what do I know.
EDIT: in the meanwhile, a lot of credit card issuers in US ARE sending us cards with PIN and chip.
It’s easy for Europeans to turn up their nose at the slow pace of change in US (e.g. wireless infrastructure) not realizing what a mammoth economy it is. Comparatively, US adopts everything more quickly than any other large economy. Except the metric system, of course.
Pin and chip were scheduled to start their rollout this month. Not sure if it has, though. It’s supposed to be a two-year ordeal. I figure it will take at least that long for NFC POS systems to become ubiquitous, anyway.
I’d like to see digital drivers licenses…
That’s how Apple does things; they do nothing until they can do everything perfectly, and the market is ready-ish. Then release it.
Thanks for the summary Ohai. I’m interested in trying this out to see what it can do, and how easily it does whatever the hell it does. So this is used for both buying junk online, and in person as long as the seller has this mysterious device? Will ApplePay also do PayPal type transfers between individuals? Because everyone hates PayPal (and their fees), it would be nice to not ever use service again.
Other vendors will offer lower fees…but Apple users will imply a better customer base, just like AmEx which may make it worth the extra fees. Apple has never been about selling the most products…just the most desirable ones. If they own the most profitable customers, and let Google have the rest, I imagine it would also greatly help in targeting ads.
Just like iOS 8.0, iOS 8.01, iOS 8.02 and iOS 8.1 in the span of a month?
Nobody cares, just zip it.
I don’t think that phone-pay of any variety provides enough of an incentive for somebody to shop at one location over another. Nobody (rational) is going to abandon their credit cards or cash any time soon and Apple Pay (and Google Wallet) just serve as credit card conduits. There are only 220,000 NFC-enabled locations in the United States (fewer than one per 1,400 Americans), so it’s not like you can really get by on phone-pay on its own right now. Maybe in a couple of years people might care, but I don’t see anyone but the mos zealous refusing to shop at a Rite-Aid because they have to whip out their credit card instead of their iPhone.
Good that we agree. It is obviously a long term project that I think will take 2-3 years to roll out.
Then why did Tim Cook just brag about how quickly people registered 1 million cards?
I think Apple Pay is just another barrier to exit the ecosystem and yes, although its use is very limited and will be for years, the point is to capture existing iPhone users today.
That said, I don’t see much point in pay-by-phone (in its current state) ever. What’s the advantage? Security? That’s accomplished with pin and chip. Convenience? Swiping (or dipping in the case of pin/chip) is, in my experience, easier. Cost? Apple Pay and Google Wallet’s fees are higher. And for me the novelty wore off pretty quickly.