“I’ve been a regular customer at CVS/pharmacy, the country’s second-largest drugstore chain, for 20 years. I’ve spent a small fortune there over that span, visiting several times a week to pick up everything from milk to toothpaste to prescriptions,” Walt Mossberg writes for Re/code. “But lately, I’m not feeling very happy with CVS, because of a business decision it made that curtailed my choice of how I could pay in its stores with my own credit cards. In fact, I’ve been taking more of my shopping down the road to CVS’s main rival, Walgreens.”
“Why? Because CVS has abruptly cut off my ability to pay for my purchases on my expensive new iPhone 6 with the first really excellent mobile phone payment system I’ve seen: Apple’s new Apple Pay, which is quicker and more secure than plastic,” Mossberg writes. “And it appears to me that the drugstore chain, and other merchants with which it is allied, are afraid of competition, afraid that I might get hooked on Apple Pay (or some competing system, like Google Wallet) before the drugstore chain and its fellow merchants can come out with their own rival mobile phone payment system, promised for next year.”
MacDailyNews Take: Hooked on Google Wallet? Good one, Walt!
In just one week, Apple Pay has already facilitated more transactions than all other ‘contact less’ payment methods combined! (Which shows how much of an epic faceplant Google Wallet has been – it was released over three years ago on September 19, 2011.)
Mossberg writes, “In other words, I’m wondering if CVS, whose name originally stood for ‘Consumer Value Store,’ really believes in letting consumers choose what’s valuable to them. By contrast, Walgreens supports Apple Pay, along with plastic credit cards.”
Much more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Once again:
Unlike CurrentC, Apple doesn’t save your transaction information. With Apple Pay, your payments are private. Apple Pay doesn’t store the details of your transactions so they can’t be tied back to you. That is what Walmart, CVS, Rite-Aid et al. hate about Apple Pay and why they currently won’t allow their customers to utilize Apple Pay.
Boycott non-cash payment systems from any company that willfully turns off NFC in an effort to block the vastly more secure, much more private, and far easier-to-use Apple Pay service.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]