Cashiers don’t understand Apple Pay and it’s totally adorable

“Apple Pay is so easy to use, it’s almost not worth writing about. It’s laughably fast and stupidly simple,” Susie Ochs reports for Macworld. “So simple it’s confusing the heck out of [U.S.] clerks and cashiers nationwide.”

“In these early days of Apple Pay, the speed and simplicity are also the perfect recipe for hilarity,” Ochs reports. “As in, the cashiers I’ve encountered definitely did not get a memo, and to a man and woman they had nooooo idea what was going on.”

“First, I went to Walgreens. I selected some socks. Four pairs for $7! You can never have too many socks, I always say,” Ochs reports. “I casually used Apple Pay to buy the socks. The smiling man must have thought I was checking my texts or something, because he was totally unprepared for the transaction to be complete. ‘What did you do?!’ he exclaimed in the tone of a caveman who just saw someone light a Zippo instead of rubbing two sticks together.”

Much more in the full article here.

Related articles:
American Express and Visa love Apple Pay – October 23, 2014
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

73 Comments

    1. This is of course what we expected. Their video showing how HARD it is to use a credit card and how EASY it is to use Apple Pay totally ignored the 15 minutes to call a manager when the cashier has no idea what this is or how it works, calls store security when you try to leave, etc.

  1. I used Apple Pay at McDonalds yesterday and the clerk was bored because he had seen it many times before.
    He told that quite a few people came in to try it out so it was not new to
    him.

        1. Can’t wait until the 20th Clipper loss, when asked about the team, ol Ballmy says “I like our strategy, I like it a lot.” Living in LA means heavy ballmer exposure, be careful.

      1. Actually with most house roofs using asphalt shingle /tile roof coverings (which have a thin layer of pebble/ROCK , then most people in the USA do live under a rock or rocks.
        Lol

    1. Without Americans, you’d be living under a totalitarian dictatorship today, if you were even alive in the first place.

      And don’t you forget it, son.

      Despite our current feminized, metrosexual, unqualified joke of a president, this country is still full of plenty of real, red-blooded Americans who are more than willing to forcefully remind you who you have to thank for being able to spout your imbecilic ignorance for all to see.

      1. Under the ‘gravatar’ for SunbeamRapier (the person you seem to be responding to), it says “Sydney, London, Berlin”. By the order of it, my guess would be he is an Australian, in which case, your statement is for him completely absurd (his place was never really under any totalitarian dictatorship threat).

        The view from home may be different, but for the rest of the world, current American president comes across as vastly more intelligent, coherent, astute, eloquent, politically mature, diplomatic and capable than his predecessor, after whose election the world was largely collectively scratching their heads (“Is it possible that they had just elected an actually dumb man for a president?”). But as I said, the view from inside may be different, and after all, why would Americans really care what the rest of the world thinks of them or their president. They are the ones who own the ball and they can always just leave the playground and go home with their ball.

        1. As if Australia wouldn’t have fallen to the Axis powers, specifically Japan. If you’ll remember, the Japanese were so off the rails that it took TWO American atom bombs to put them in their place and win the war.

          As for London and Berlin… F14T16 was correct as well.

        2. Well, that was somewhat ignorant. Japanese NEVER intended to invade the Australian continent (historical document confirm this beyond doubt, google it). Australians did participate in the war with over a million troups; first in the EU teatre, later in the Pacific (helping out the Americans against the Japanese).

          The American sacrifice in the second world war was truly great (almost half a million soldiers died; in absolute numbers, more than most other allied nations except Russia and China, although when expressed as percentage of population, a bit lower on that list; nevertheless). However, by claiming that Americans rode in and saved the world from dictatorship is to essentially dismiss the massive effort of the rest of the allied nations, which is, frankly, a bit vulgar. I lost two uncles in that war, and every family I know from my part of the world has lost many family members in it (as a nation, we gave up 15% of our population). Out of the war’s total number of military casualties (between 22-30 million), US ones represent just about 1-1.5%. It is a slight exaggeration to say that the American contribution, great as it was, decided the outcome of the war. What it did is made it shorter, which saved many more lives, for which the world is rightfully grateful.

        3. If the universal health care law is the only legacy left behind Obama, it is enough to make him the greatest president in the American history.

          To most of us who are from outside America, it is incomprehensible to understand how can one of the richest countries of the world also be one of the most selfish people, who refuse to take part in building a comprehensive system that would provide health care for every one of your citizens. Even in countries like Cuba and North Korea, such system exists, and even the poorest and the unemployed have free and unlimited access to doctors. Obviously, the quality of such care is directly dependent on the resources the country has, but that is precisely my point: a country with massive resources, as rich as America, refuses to develop a system that would protect health of all of its inhabitants, leaving everyone to their own devices, where profit is the primary driver of decisions.

        4. Predrag, I am an American. I lived overseas for 26 years and only recently returned “home”. I still keep in close touch with friends and news outlets from overseas.

          Your statement ” but for the rest of the world, current American president comes across as vastly more intelligent, coherent, astute, eloquent, politically mature, diplomatic and capable than his predecessor,” – is very naive. Outwardly, yes, many do, especially what media puts out, but the fact is, he is greatly disrespected and the view is quite opposite of every word you wrote. It one thing to develop an opinion from other world news media and another to develop it from the both the grassroots people and government officials demeanor. Reading between the lines reveals a different opinion than your statement.

        5. Well, you may be correct, but it very much depends on where you are and to whom you talk. Over the years, the affection and respect for Obama has eroded even in the rest of the world, but my main point was in comparison to his predecessor, he is generally perceived as more competent and intelligent.

        6. Wrong. There were a number of penal colonies which predated the formation of the country Australia in 1901. Even before federation of the country in 1901 the number of free settlers/immigrants vastly outnumbered the small numbers transported to the Great Southern Land as punishment. Australia is not and never was a penal colony.

      1. Yup, I had the pizza guy tell me that his ‘droid already had that feature, and I explained to him that, yes, many ‘droid phones did have NFC, but ApplePay was a complete end-to-end payment solution, not just the technology in the phone. I don’t think he cared. 😛

  2. i went to a mcdonalds right after the upgrade. the cashier told me how much and apple pay was all done. i said i know, i already paid. she looked down amazed. she was waiting for me to reach in a pocket for cash or credit card. this is going to be fun until it is common place.

  3. BJ’s is on the Apple website list of stores that now accept Apple Pay. Except the BJs store I went to in Seekonk, MA and that involved a cashier AND a manager. “No, that doesn’t work here.” I waved my iPhone plus and it asked for Touch ID. I clicked and it showed a check mark DONE! But they didn’t know how to process it. My phone said the days current date and time with “latest transaction” with a dash. Not an amount. Had to use a physical card. Adorable is one word for it.

  4. Oh, boy. This article confirms the only thing I’m going to hate about Apple Pay. The last 4 of my credit card won’t show up on the receipt. What shows up is the last 4 of the token. This matters because I record every purchase and need to tell our credit cards apart. I guess I’m just going to have to be better at recording my purchases quickly, before I forget which purchases are mine and which are my wife’s.

    ——RM

    1. You are actually using paper receipts to keep track of your transactions? I’m trying very hard to imagine a scenario where this would be the only way to do it but cannot. Don’t you have online access to your bank? Not to mention services such as Mint.com?

      In increasing number of establishments are now asking if I want the receipt or not (finally!), which I always refuse. This colossal waste of paper really needs to stop! All these transactions can be easily found in our credit card records, and they appear there practically at the moment they are completed. I can no longer remember when was the last paper statement I had received for anything (phone, utility, credit card, cable…). If I have a computer, I may well use it to keep track of my money, instead of piling mountains of paper that invariably ends up in some recycling plant or worse, in the landfill.

      1. A paper receipt from, say, 2007 in your possession, especially one bearing your signature, could conceivably save your life if it was your only alibi in a murder trial. Electronic records wouldn’t be anywhere near as persuasive to a jury.

        1. Your argument is technically valid, but realistically just unimaginable. I can imagine many people still preserving their monthly statements in paper, but each and every individual credit card slip for each transaction ever made? On average, my family and I make some 2,000 credit card transactions per year. Keeping track of those thousands of receipts would require a severe case of OCD, which unfortunately I just don’t have. My guess is, neither does most of the population.

        2. Your position on paper records is the socially responsible one, but certain professions, like archaeology and history, would defend paper and its material substitutes as a profound cultural substrate and an endangered one. But they’re a minority. So is the person in my example, taken from a detective novel.

      2. You don’t take the receipt? You just trust what the bank tells you? You have a perfect memory and remember every transaction? Or maybe you’ve been a victim of credit card fraud and never even knew it.

        I keep the receipt so I can enter the transaction into iBank. Usually, I don’t have the time to enter it right there at the register. Then I save the receipt until I reconcile iBank to my bank’s web site, which I do every couple of weeks.

        If you’re not reconciling what the bank tells you against your own records, you’re opening yourself up to fraud. I caught my card number being stolen when the bank didn’t, because there was a charge on the web site that wasn’t in iBank. The charge wasn’t “weird” enough to set off their fraud detectors, but I knew I hadn’t made the charge.

        ——RM

        1. Well, the bank tells me that I have made a purchase on a Tuesday evening at Whole Foods in the amount of $45.90. I don’t need a receipt to confirm that the charge was mine, because I can easily remember that I was at the Whole Foods on Tuesday night and bought $45 worth of groceries. But when I see a $85 charge at Frames bowling alley for last Saturday, I’ll know that someone had swiped my card somehow, since I’ve never been to this bowling alley. There were several occasions when I have seen charges on my statements (which I check occasionally, perhaps once a week) that I haven’t recognised, but in the end, they all turned out to be for things that I had done in a course of a day and forgotten about them, and the merchant name was somewhat forgettable. In other words, my system produces several false-positive alerts, but can’t even remember when was the last time I had a fraudulent charge on my credit cards (and there was time where they were somewhat frequent — once a year). I don’t use iBank; i use Mint, which neatly consolidates transactions from all of my credit cards and other accounts into a single list, automatically categorised and sorted according to my preference.

        2. And on the subject of credit card fraud, in the twenty three years of using American credit cards, I have had about dozen instances when my card was compromised. In most cases, the incident produced some 20 – 30 fraudulent charges within about 30 minutes, most of them long-distance phone calls to some African countries (Togo, Benin, Burkina, Cameroon, Mali…) before the card issuer suspended the account. And in many cases, I could easily figure out exactly when and where the card was compromised (for example, when my wife handed her credit card for a moment to our baby daughter, while she was collecting her purchase in a convenience store, and a suspicious guy was looking on from behind her; the two minutes were enough for the guy to read and memorize/copy the card number while my baby was playing with it). And in none of those cases was I ever charged for ANY of the transactions that weren’t mine.

          In recent years, the card issuers’ fraud prevention algorithms seem to be reliable enough to prevent these types of theft, so I haven’t really seen any fraud in a long while. On the other hand, I did get my card declined on occasion when traveling overseas, and I had to call them to let them know that the transaction was actually mine. I am assuming ApplePay transactions will be excluded from these types of measures, since the security measures guarantee authenticity of user.

      1. From the story –

        “The last four digits shown on the receipt are not on my card—that’s the token! Also, it says “Card present” but that was really my iPhone.”

  5. Don’t try that purchase at Rite Aid today. They no longer accept Apple Pay. I guess someone made them a better offer for contactless payments. An offer that no one will use, but hey, it’s their business…

  6. When Apple designs a new technology for consumer consumption, priority is given to efficiency, ease of use and convenience for the consumer. Apple’s competitors have a consumer exploitation priority and usually result in unintuitive,annoying and inefficient technologies.

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