I think that apple pay is really unnecessary (there is already NFC VISA cards). I would rather have a paying system that bypass the VISA-MasterCard monopole. Directly from your bank account.
Said every person who worked in a bank's or retailer's finance organization...
It is for these reasons that we see new cartels being built-up in Switzerland with Twint (top 5 Swiss banks and top merchants) and in the USA with Walmart's failed (for everybody but them) MCX/CurrentC initiative.
[doublepost=1468922510][/doublepost]
so, now you can rent a lorry privately in France.
Not funny. (And incorrect. Your card issuer still has a record of this. Hopefully the ISIS nihilists will read only your comment and not mine.). And you should apologize for saying stupid things.
[doublepost=1468923480][/doublepost]
My point is that apple could have gone with a solution to bypass the VISA-MC monopoly, I find incredible that we are still using the same crappy network with huge fees in 2016. There have been many solutions by startups in the recent years, but a big company like apple could really change the market in this area. It's a billion dollar market.
[doublepost=1468918298][/doublepost]
I would totally support something like this.
Tim Cook explained this at AP's announcement.
He said Apple looked at alternatives but saw that folks loved their credit cards (the 0-liability, transaction insurances, the loyalty programs, as well as the coming near-ubiquity of NFC POS terminals) and then decided to build AP upon the existing and expanding (credit-card-based) NFC POS system.
Aside from any undisclosed contract arrangements with banks or card networks (or local government finance regulations), there is nothing to prevent Apple, long after NFC and AP is everywhere, from offering up a direct AP solution which cuts out card networks (essentially becoming a new card network) and working directly with banks. Alternatively, in the bigger markets, there is nothing that prevents Apple from doing the former as well as becoming a payment processor or a bank offering customers an end to end solution from the merchants terminal.
But such initiatives and transitions are extremely ambitious, have many moving parts to implement, don't help to sell more iPhones than the current partnerships do, and are very far down the road.
[doublepost=1468923678][/doublepost]
We have something like that in Europe: SEQR. You connect it to any bank account and can pay either using a QR code or NFC.
If your system involves QR codes, you're doing it wrong. (In b4 someone from a bank or merchant consortium starts whining about Apple's monopolistic use of its TouchID sensor.)
[doublepost=1468924142][/doublepost]
To clarify what I meant: the issue is present if the country you live in doesn't have any bank issuing cards which support Apple Pay.
You were able to add your French card because Apple Pay is already supported by some UK banks. But if your phone was set to Ireland for example (where no bank supports Apple Pay), you wouldn't even have had the option to add a card. It is a bit silly as there are plenty of POS terminals in Ireland which support Apple Pay and you have a card which also support it, but Apple will not let you set it up just because of your regional settings.
Because 99 and 44/100's of folks don't have a card from outside their home country. If Apple didn't hide this feature in countries where the banks have not yet agreed to play with Apple Pay, can you imagine all the calls from unhappy customers Apple would get? (Although, the complaint calls to the banks would also put a bit of pressure on the banks.)
Apple made a practical decision to hide a non-functional feature (for the majority) but didn't really disable it for the lucky few who happen to have a card from outside their country of residence.
It's beyond easy to flip the country switch, install a card, and flip back.
It's the opposite of silly.
