“Apple Pay launched in the United States last month with support at over 220,000 stores operated by participating merchants, including Apple Stores, American Eagle, Aeropostale, Bloomingdale’s, Champs Sports, Chevron, McDonald’s, Nike, Office Depot, Radio Shack and Walgreens,” Joe Rossignol reports for 9to5Mac.
“Additional retailers and apps have since added Apple Pay support including Staples, and now the mobile payments service can be used for parking, rent and at even more retailers as of this month,” Rossignol reports. “Chicago-based startup SpotHero updated its app earlier this week with support for Apple Pay mobile payments. SpotHero is an innovative solution to find parking, compare rates and book a spot for up to 50% off the drive-up rate.”
Rossignol reports, “It is now also possible to actually pay your rent with Apple Pay using another innovative app called RadPad, regardless of how old-school your landlord is.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Lynn Weiler” for the heads up.]
When my friend Misty Kanyon starts accepting it, then I’ll be all in.
Doesn’t she take Visa?
No, but she takes it…nevermind.
Is there another app besides Master Card Nearby that lists all area contactless merchants?
A local market, a coffee shop, and Walgreens have disappeared from its list, and the nearby Staples doesn’t (yet) appear, although that store might not have installed the needed terminals yet.
I used it at Whole Foods yesterday. I had used it at Walgreen McDonald’s and TechCU. But at whole foods I had to sign. Huh? So I signed Steve Jobs. Clerk never looked at it. Clerk said I was only her fourth ApplePay customer. That store is two miles from Infinity Loop. Customers in line were impressed BTW.
I’ll take “Places I would not want to live” for 200 Alex.
What are major metropolitan areas like New York, Chicago, Washington, Boston, Philadelphia, Newark, Denver, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and New Orleans?
I’ve already done my time (7 years) near Washington, D.C.
More power to those of you who do however.
Dear Tim Cook:
Suggestion. Take handful of cash from your $160 billion pile and BUY APPLE PAY TERMINALS for every effing place in the U.S. that has a cash register. McDonald’s and Target are nice but 99% of the places I eat or shop at still use the dinosaur Verifone swipe boxes. I swear I don’t understand companies sometime
Visa, MasterCard and American Express have already required all merchants to upgrade their terminals by October 2015 to obtain the lowest swipe rate and avoid responsibility for fraud.
I went and checked it out and they want $53+ as a service charge to use a credit card. That is insane. Debit card wasn’t too bad at $4.95.
For interested people, that’s a 2.99% fee for using credit on RadPad’s rent payment service. $53+ is for dougbromac’s apparently $1775 rent payment.
Let’s suppose you have a credit card with 1.5% cash back… Now that interest rate would cost you $26.50. Maybe you have 0% introductory interest on that card (or even if not, the statement comes next mont) but a balance of $1775 on an interest gathering card (say 18%). 18% / 12 months = 1.5 %. See, you can imagine a situation where it makes sense for a person to accept this fee. Add the convenience of the service and the benefit of a bank overdraft cash buffer between paychecks and you can easily see how this can appeal to some people some of the time.
Dougbromac is correct, however, that no one should use credit card rent pay on RadPad as a matter of habit without first crunching their own numbers and being okay with the costs.
The two cards in my example might even be one and the same.
I’ll have to take a closer more cautionary look before I would consider it. My instant reaction was, “Oh, boy! I can get Flyer Miles for my rent!” Then I clicked through to see that whopper of a service charge.
That’s an interesting angle though, a cash back CC to defray the RadPad charge and to provide a cash float if needed.
Of course, the problem is that some people (many? most?) would use the service because they don’t have their rent money at all and until they get back on track they are paying the merchant fees on top of the interest. Hopefully this helps people avoid late fees, overdrafts, and other penalties and not just rack up scary debt. Treated as an interest charge a 2.99% fee every month is like a 35.88% interest loan on one months rent over the year, figuring that you get only a month’s reprieve at any given time in terms of the fungibility benefits. Does that make any sense? Anyway I’m skeptical about this now and fearing who would use it.
Yes, it gives me great pause. I think of the payday loan places with their loan shark interest rates. It could be “for emergencies only.” The fine for 3 days late with my property manager is $75.
I love Apple Pay and use it every chance I get. I just put air in my tires at a chevron with Apple Pay. Can’t wait to use it more and more..