“Apple Inc.’s payments service, now three months old, is making progress toward a goal that has eluded other mobile wallets: persuading people to use it,” Daisuke Wakabayashi reports for The Wall Street Journal. “Previous efforts by Google Inc., eBay Inc. and a host of startups to prod shoppers to pay for purchases with a mobile phone have languished, because consumers didn’t see an advantage over swiping a credit or debit card.”
“Early signs suggest that Apple Pay is different,” Wakabayashi reports. “‘Our customers are saying it’s safer,’ said Brittany Salcedo, night manager at Canyon Market in Springdale, Utah, near Zion National Park. The supermarket installed the wireless readers that work with Apple Pay three weeks ago. Though Ms. Salcedo hasn’t kept a formal tally, she estimates that 30% of the store’s shoppers are using the service.”
“The machines also accept Softcard, a competing mobile-payments service owned by a group of U.S. wireless carriers, but Ms. Salcedo estimates that five times as many customers use Apple Pay as Softcard,” Wakabayashi reports. “Harbortouch Payments LLC, an Allentown, Pa., supplier of point-of-sale systems, said it has witnessed a similar surge in interest among its clients. Harbortouch has offered free wireless readers to them since 2012. As of August 2013 , 22% of its merchants had installed readers. In the month after Apple Pay was announced, 68% of orders asked for the readers. ‘It’s like night and day,’ said Brendan Lauber, Harbortouch’s chief technology officer. ‘Now, merchants are actively coming to us and asking how to support this.'”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Arline M.” for the heads up.]
No amount of FUD will derail this juggernaut.
The key is maintaining vault-like security. People have been trained by Windows to tolerate a lack of security in computing. But people tend to be much more sensitive about the security of their financial data (except in odd, illogical ways) and much more concerned about convenience. The unique combination of security and convenience is why Apple Pay is ascendant and why other mobile payment systems have failed to capture large numbers of consumers.
Apple can afford some missteps with respect to WiFi and such. But Apple Pay has to remain rock solid secure.
Apple Pay could turn out to be one of the most underrated and undervalued releases since the iPhone. Not only is Apple Pay the ultimate device tie in for the iPhone and Apple Watch, but it also represents a potentially huge, stable, and long term revenue stream for Apple. I would not be surprised if Apple eventually split off Apple Pay, which would then formthe core of a new Apple Financial division that might expand into other financial products, such as banking and investment. Consider the success of GMAC and other corporate finance arms.
At least 3 out of 10 customers have iPhone 6!
Don’t know why you’re getting downvoted. That raised my eyebrows, too.
I love Apple Pay. I use it every time I can. And I know it’s going to be a huge success.
That said, I simply cannot believe that 30% of that business’s customers have an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus. One out of every three customers have a brand-new iPhone?
——RM