“Consumers have been slower than expected to embrace using their phones to pay for goods and services at the cash register,” Shara Tibken reports for CNET. “Yet Apple CEO Tim Cook is still hoping for the demise of physical currency.”
“That’s one of the key takeaways from Cook, who spoke at the company’s annual shareholder meeting Tuesday,” Tibken reports. “Cook also touched on the booming wearables business and the opportunity in health care. Likewise, he addressed the tax reforms passed in December and his vision for the future.”
“‘I’m hoping that I’m still going to be alive to see the elimination of money,’ Cook said during the shareholder meeting. ‘Mobile payments have taken off slower than I personally would have thought if you asked me sitting here a few years ago,’ Cook said,” Tibken reports. “In the US, companies aren’t always motivated to make innovative health care products because they’re focused on what can be reimbursed by Medicare or Medicaid, Cook said. That’s not always in the patient’s best interest, he added.”
“The company will pay $38 billion in taxes to bring the money back to the US. Apple said it plans to invest $30 billion in the US over the next five years by building its new campus and creating 20,000 new jobs,” Tibken reports. “Factoring in current spending, product sales tax and taxes on employees’ wages, Apple said it expects to contribute $350 billion to the US economy over that period.”
Much more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: A good compendium of this year’s shareholders meeting.
We use Apple Pay pretty much daily, usually multiple times per day, and we haven’t used our iPhones at a cash register since April 2015.
(We use our Apple Watches.)
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
iLive in Michigan, Traverse City to be more to the point. Home Depot still does not accept Apple Pay, Lowe’s still does not accept Apple Pay, Menards still does not accept Apple Pay. iOwn my own small business. iAccept Apple pay. What the hell is wrong with these home improvement box stores? Just does not add up in my book to good business practices. You can lead a horse to the water…. but……? Yeah, stupid is as stupid does. Have a Grateful day.
What’s wrong? Expecting everyone to think and behave as you. That’s the curse of identifying yourself as a self-described genius.
Did I miss something? Exactly where did (s)he identify him/herself as a “self-described genius”?
If a small business can afford to invest in a point-of-sale terminal that accepts ApplePay (and that can cost as little as $50), a large chain of home improvement stores surely can afford a few thousand per store for change and training.
Obviously, the obstacle isn’t the cost, or logistics; it is their misguided strategic decision to not accept ApplePay. The choice between accepting or not comes down to the cost vs. benefit argument:
Accepting ApplePay comes at a cost (precentage of each transaction goes to Apple, also they lose the ability to identify each customer (and their spending) through their credit cards (ApplePay virtualises the original credit card number, so the merchant can’t know who is the customer).
Meanwhile, benefits of ApplePay are significant reduction in fraudulent charges (which are the responsibility of the merchant, if they use the old-school mag-stripe method, or of the bank, if chip&pin is used).
Merchants that have adopted ApplePay have already learned that the reduction in fraud more than makes up for any quantifiable loss of revenue from inability to track customers (and direct-advertise to them).
… being an asshole come naturally or do you have to really work at it. Whichever, you’re a pro.
“Tim Cook is still hoping for the demise of physical currency.
I’m sure Apple who will now save tens’s and ten’s of millions in taxes every year thanks to the GOP tax cuts will love for consumers to buy their $700 phones which they may have to upgrade every so often just so they can purchase things.
Well, if the corporations and everything in between would allow consumers to earn a livable wage, it may happen. But they don’t. so it won’t.
Trump is proposing a $0.25 tax increase on gasoline. Imagine that, the GOP just wrote and Trump signed a massive tax cut for the rich and corporations and you are going to end upping for it – not to mention the also want to cut SS and MC.
How will Democrats be bribed if cash isn’t available?
Ditto for GOP politicians, you partisan idiot. I suppose that you think that dozens of Republicans flipped their positions just out of their love of Trump, lol. Surely you watched them get bought off to pay for the tax bill? Honestly, I cannot believe the blind partisan extremism on this forum. You seem to really believe that Trump is helping America and the regular Joe even as he screws everyone but his rich cronies in the a$$. Trump has no more loyalty to you than he does to all of the supporters that he has turned on in his administration and Congress, such as Bob Corker. Just because Trump talks like a regular person doesn’t mean that he isn’t a billionaire elitist who uses people like tools and values money, power, and approval more than your life.
I would estimate that about 2/3 of my weekly purchases are done via ApplePay. And I live in a small city.
The replacement of paper currency with electronic indicates that big gub’mnt will be able to control your money supply the way it wants, not the way you want. It will be able to track you via your purchases. No. I don’t want this future. I want both, electronic and paper. It’s what’s called choice and competition between the two categories.
I live in Canada. I am out of the country for about half the year for various reasons. But, when I’m at home, I never use paper money. I use Apple Pay. Everywhere. There’s not a single business that doesn’t accept it, except perhaps restaurants. (They haven’t yet figured out how to do the tipping.) When I’m away from home I cannot use ApplePay at all. Even in countries like France which has adopted ApplePay everywhere, it does not work with foreign accounts. When this drawback is resolved I will be delighted. Developing countries are another matter. Even the last stable countries like Costa Rica won’t see ApplePay for year, yet.
Preach it, Timmy. Maybe next week’s sermon will include castigating human rights abuses in China that favor Apple’s profits.
I don’t know why I need to enter my PIN number with each Apple Pay transaction. It seems like touch or Face ID should be enough. When using my debit card with Apple Pay, with the additional step of entering a pin, the transaction takes almost as long as a card swipe does. Once the banks forego the need to manually enter a pin, I think adoption will accelerate. Or maybe it’s just my bank?
Or you could just move to using a credit card, and paying it off at the end of every month, thus possibly accumulating benefits (flight miles, cash back, etc.) and saving the effort of entering a PIN, without losing any of the benefits of Apple Pay.