“Apple chief exec Tim Cook says that the company’s new mobile payments service, Apple Pay, ‘will forever change the way we buy,'” Cade Metz writes for Wired. “If Apple Pay is successful, it will change the way we buy in more ways than you might expect. It will meld online buying and offline buying into one.”
“Apple Pay isn’t just a way to pay for stuff at places like McDonald’s, Walgreens, and Macy’s. It’s a new way to pay for stuff inside mobile applications like Uber, which lets you instantly order a car ride, and Instacart, which lets you instantly order groceries,” Metz writes. “In short, it equips your phone with a single way to pay for anything—online, offline, or in that new netherworld between the two recently pioneered by the likes of Uber, an app that lets you pay for an immediate offline experience using an online tool.”
“Others offer payment services that seek to blur these same lines, including Google and PayPal. But unlike these players, Apple seems to have bootstrapped a service that can reach the mainstream much quicker, that can instantly allow an enormous number of people to pay for an enormous numbers of goods and services across both apps and physical stores,” Metz writes. “The difference is not just that Apple offers the service on a new phone that will quickly wind up in thousands of pockets. It’s not just that, with 800 million credit cards on file with its existing iTunes store, it can so easily activate the service for so many people. It’s also that these advantages — together with the company’s general clout — have allowed Apple to convince so many big name merchants to accept the service from day one.”
Read more in the full article here.
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