“As a second wave of Apple Watch reviews questions its raison d’etre, Jefferies analyst Sundeep Bajikar argues that mobile payments via Apple Pay will be the killer app for the new smartwatch,” Patrick Seitz reports for Investor’s Business Daily.
“‘We think the convenience of using Apple Pay on Apple Watch with or without a tethered iPhone, while ensuring a higher level of security and privacy as compared to using physical credit cards, is likely to gain traction as a smarter way to pay,’ Bajikar said in a research report Monday,” Seitz reports. “Apple’s mobile payment service will become even more compelling when it ties payments to retailer loyalty programs, he said.”
Seitz reports, “The Apple Watch also is well positioned to become a convenient and secure ‘repository’ of ‘electronic credentials’ including airline boarding passes, membership cards and hotel room keys, Bajikar said.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote of Apple Watch back on December 30, 2014:
Apple Pay alone will sell the device.
My killer app is, Pay Day.
Every analyst sees Apple Pay differently for value to Apple. All the way from nearly worthless to really huge. It always puzzles me how there can be such a difference of opinion. Of course, I’m never sure if the ones who say Apple Pay is nearly worthless is whether they mean that it won’t move Apple’s revenue needle or something to that effect. I think as long as Apple uses various services to strengthen the iOS platform it’s quite important whether it moves the revenue needle or not. Platform stickiness is important to Apple.
I’m hoping when the next iPod Touch is introduced it will pair with the AppleWatch for secure payments and that should sell more of both products.
For me, I’ve rediscovered REMOTE. Not all that convenient on the phone, wonder on the watch.
‘wonderful’ on the watch
Have you figure out how to get it paired with an iTunes Library?? I’ve got it paired to every AppleTV in the house, but can’t figure out how to connect it to iTunes on my Mac. I know it’s probably ridiculously easy, and I’m over thinking it …
I agree Pay is a great part of the WATCH experience. But getting merchants to be Pay aware is like pulling teeth. A restaurant chain of Mexican food here in Santa Cruz CA recently got new Pay NFC compatible terminals without knowing it. The employees kept telling me they were NOT Pay compatible. So I began complaining to the owner of the chain that he’d not gotten Pay terminals after I had asked him to do so. Then I started calling his Bank of America merchant services to find out why they were still placing non Pay compatible terminals
Took me about ten different wrong department numbers different BofA employees gave me before I finally found a guy who could look up their account and tell me they ARE Pay compatible. So for two months the employees of these restaurants were telling customers their terminals weren’t when they were.😱😖💥😨
So now the owner is having a meeting with the BofA idiots who placed the Pay compatible terminals in his restaurants without explaining Pay to him AT ALL😁. Today they told him on the phone that they didn’t think Pay was worth mentioning to him.💥😖😱
So this was a case where I had to drag the owner of a restaurant chain into the awareness bubble of Pay because nobody at the Bank of America – a charter Pay bank – had the common sense to explain it to him and his employees at the time of the new NFC terminal installations.😖😨😢👎🏻💥