“Apple Inc.’s new mobile-payment system is failing to capture all of its potential business, according to a survey, with two-thirds of users reporting problems using the service at the checkout counter,” Tim Higgins and Elizabeth Dexheimer report for Bloomberg. “While 66 percent of iPhone 6 and 6 Plus owners surveyed had signed up for Apple Pay, repeat usage is being hurt, the study by Phoenix Marketing International said. Almost half of users visited a store listed as an Apple Pay merchant only to find they couldn’t use the service because the location wasn’t actually accepting the system or wasn’t ready to do so, according to the survey, which drew about 3,000 respondents.”
“The system works only at stores that have upgraded their cash registers to accept chip-embedded credit cards. It’s now supported by 2,500 banks in the U.S. and about 700,000 locations accept it, Cook said this month,” Higgins and Dexheimer report. “Of the problems that occurred at merchants, 48 percent of those surveyed said it took too long to record the transaction, while 42 percent said the cashier was unfamiliar with Apple Pay and unable to help.”
“A new U.S. standard is requiring that merchants and banks switch from a card system using magnetic stripes toward chips because the technology is more effective at preventing fraud. While the deadline for that conversion is in October, only about a third of U.S. cash registers had been converted at the end of last year, a figure expected to rise to a half by the end of 2015, according to data from an industry group,” Higgins and Dexheimer report. “‘Apple is riding on this EMV wave and they are beholden to a glacial speed of progression because nothing changes overnight in payments,’ said Nick Holland, a payments analyst at Javelin Strategy & Research. ‘It’s frustrating — for Apple and Apple Pay users.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We’ve already changed our shopping patterns; dropping non-Apple Pay stores, whether they be slow or deliberately holding out, and doing business with Apple Pay stores. It’s your choice, retailers, but it would be beneficial to you to remember Apple’s demographic edge when it comes to customers with disposable income and the will to spend it.
We’ve dumped CVS for Walgreens, for just one example. What are you going to do to earn back our business, CVS?
Related articles:
The effect of Apple Pay on mobile and online stores: Ka-ching! – March 19, 2015
How Apple Pay will work on your Apple Watch – March 13, 2015
Apple Pay proves Apple continues to out-innovate would-be competitors – February 20, 2015
Apple Pay takes off, leaving moribund competitors in the dust – January 27, 2015
