“Simplicity is Apple’s pitch as it leaps into mobile payments, which Forrester Research estimates will total $31 billion this year and $90 billion in 2017. So far Square, Google, and Softcard — a wallet app backed by the three largest U.S. wireless carriers — have struggled to prove to retailers that they have a winning system,” Tim Higgins and Elizabeth Dexheimer report for Bloomberg. “‘Most people that have worked on this have started by focusing on creating a business model that was centered on their self-interest instead of focusing on the user experience,’ Cook said at the iPhone launch.”
“Apple isn’t the first company to enter the field with a huge pile of cash, but Apple Pay, launched on Oct. 20, has two advantages,” Higgins and Dexheimer report. “The first is design. Once their credit or debit cards are on file in the Passbook app that comes with an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus, shoppers don’t need to key in their passcodes and call up an app to use the service. The iPhone loads a ‘pay with Touch ID’ message when its shortwave wireless transceiver is close enough to a card reader at a checkout counter. Then all it takes is a fingerprint.”
“The second advantage is Apple’s partnership with credit card companies and banks that it says account for more than 80 percent of U.S. credit card purchases, allowing the iPhone maker to piggyback on their checkout systems. Apple will also collect fees from the credit issuers, according to three people familiar with the deals who weren’t authorized to discuss them,” Higgins and Dexheimer report. “‘It was obvious that the Apple environment was going to be the launch partner,’ says Jim McCarthy, head of innovation at Visa. Apple’s involvement ‘became a real rallying cry to get everyone moving in the right direction.'”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
Apple Pay: Yet another game-changing revolution from Apple as the digital wallet pays up – October 23, 2014
Shopping with Apple Pay: Convenient, problem-free and even fun – October 21, 2014
McDonald’s: Decision to support Apple Pay was easy – October 20, 2014
Apple Pay launches today and retail will never be the same – October 20, 2014
Apple Pay will dominate… no doubt about it!
Did you say that Apple pay will abominate?
I agree with you! The other wannabe electronic wallets have just seen their personalized abominable snowman who is not a snow leopard!!
Apples abominable wallet will frighten the other wallets to death or to flee them snow covered peaks to the dry rocky shallows of them gulches!! 🙂
While twisting words, in my mind your post read as Obamanate. I’m not at all trying to make this a political issue, just a funny play on words. (How would you make this political anyway? I’m sure some could find a way.)
Wow! Really? How does anyone dominate with only 45% of Americans using iOS and probably only 15% using the iOS devices that can accommodate this feature? iPhones primary business are teens and tweens…. Dominate really? Stay tuned, as CVS and Walmart not playing along is just the beginning. Apple Pay has no security breach defences record short of the verbiage offered by Apple Inc. Hackers will have a field day with this.
I’m curious about returns / refunds and how that works. Anybody have to do that yet?
I suspect it would be just like any other credit transaction – take it up with your credit card company. The processor isn’t even known to us 99% of the time. Now that it will be Apple doesn’t change much.
That’s all in my opinion, but it seems a logical conclusion to me. I would love to hear from someone with real world expertise.
When you are processing a return, you don’t call your credit card company. You bring your item to the store where you bought it, they take the receipt, enter the transaction in the cash register and you normally give them your credit card, so that they can give you your money back. Instead of the credit card, you’ll tap the phone and the money will go back to the card. Transaction is identical as purchase, only the money goes in the opposite direction.
As for the charge-backs, they don’t involve the actual method of payment. If a charge is unautorised, or you are disputing it, you call your credit card company and resolve it with them. Apple doesn’t really deal with any of this (as doesn’t any other merchant account service provider).
This is a good question, but I assume that you would just use your phone at the terminal like you would when you pay.
Totally misinterpreted your question. Sorry. My answer was more for a disputed charge situation, and not the more common return/refund. I have no clue there. I would hope it would be as simple as a normal CC processor, but don’t know.
Apple pay works great. Tried it last night at McDs in Orlando Airport. You have to have the APP for the card you register with Apple pay. As soon as you pay, you get an email receipt. It all happens so fast you could almost miss it. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I didn’t even ask about Apple pay, just stuck my phone a couple inches from the register and my phone awoke…showed me the card it was gonna use and as soon as my finger touched the fingerprint scanner on my phone it came up APPROVED. When I open the Cap One app on my phone is shows time/place/amount. The guy at the register said “man that is COOL…I mean REALLY COOL!!” He didn’t even realize what happened either. I knew if I asked they would say they have NO IDEA. Really nice…now just need Etrade Visa to get on the bandwagon.
just like apple showed the pc world what a pc was (and still is after a long transgression into DOS and windows) and the mobile music player world what a mobile music player was, and the smartphone world what a smartphone was, and the mobile tablet world what a mobile tablet was, it is showing the mobile payment what mobile payment looks like.
like american football, you don’t always have to be the first to score, but doing it right is what matters and is where all the rewards are. apple is winning most of the games on its schedule and has a power ranking of close to ∞.
off topic: i have talked myself into a 27″ retina imac, when the non-retina is more than enough to replace my still working fine 24″ 2007 core 2 duo extreme. this is the longest i have gone between upgrades since my original 1985 mac plus (which by the way cost the same as the 27″ retina imac in 1985 ($2499). in 1985 $, the retina imac would cost $7200 today. apple’s innovation combined with design & aspirational marketing is certainly working.
LOL! I think my circa 1993-94 Centris 610 cost me about $4,000 with the monitor, external modem (dial up!), upgraded memory, etc. Sure makes that retina iMac look cheap!
So does Bank of Amurderca.
It’s getting old Roadkill. Real old!
Don’t worry, I’ll stop as soon as the war criminal George Bush is brought to trial for crimes against humanity and/or the United Hates regrows a spine and/or the United Hates crawls out of the cesspool it is currently swimming in.
Meanwhile just consider it a constant reminder for those Americans who need to learn a lesson in humanity. It is getting old, many others would have learned the lesson by now and acted upon it. What can I say, some people are just thick.
But Google Wallet was there first since 2011 and Android OS has like 90% smartphone market share, so by reason Apple Pay must fail. It is decreed by the heavens. Eric Schmidt has said many times how Apple Pay will be just a flash in the pan and in a month they’ll discover Google Wallet works much better.
/s
I hope Apple has patented Apple Pay well and no one can copy them
Not in Judge Koh’s Court (Wink, Wink).