exactly, super fast, and we are on the 18th iOS.
And, India still doesn't have Apple Pay.
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Apple Celebrates 10-Year Anniversary of Apple Pay With Open Letter and Interview
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And, India still doesn't have Apple Pay.
Can someone explain to me why is Apple Pay some sort of a special service? Why couldn't any one else do it? I mean paypal has been there for ages before it and it basically worked like Apple Pay. Apple Pay's advantage was its touch/Face-ID authentication since they own the hardware+software which Paypal and other services could not replicate.
Some online stores have implemented Apple pay during checkout. You can pay with any card in your wallet, your information is automatically populated during checkout and tracking can be viewed through both, the vendor site and through Apple’s wallet.
I don’t know exactly how it works, but a few times that I paid w/ a non-Apple credit card in Apple pay inside of a store, and then had to return smth, it just worked. I was quoted the amount and the card it’s going back on, no friction.
If you need an example, the last vendor I remember doing all of this is a small regional shoe company around New Orleans https://orleansshoes.com/
Not progressing fast enough. Took too long for many countries. No Apple Card world wide. Failed Apple Cash. Membership card not solved, and receipt.
For many outside America, NFC payment has been a thing for a long time. Apple Pay only brought the card inside the phone. For those from US, Apple Pay IS NFC.
For many outside America, NFC payment has been a thing for a long time. Apple Pay only brought the card inside the phone. For those from US, Apple Pay IS NFC.
We don't have the big box stores where I am. I'm just glad that all my local stores take AP. I'm waiting for the street people to start using card readers.
This for me has been one of the most transformative changes Apple has made. Before Apple Pay, I always made sure I had cash on me. I was never comfortable swiping my debit card especially when I was on a vacation. And I was never keen on piling up credit card interest. Apple Pay solved all those issues for me. Now I hardly ever carry cash.
A lot of it boils down to one word - leverage.
1) Apple has aggregated a customer base that, while small in an absolute sense compared to Android, had an outsized willingness and ability to spend. You see me parrot this refrain pretty often, both here and elsewhere, but the idea is that Apple will always win the high-end segment of the market that is willing to pay for nice things, so long as they continue to deliver a great user experience.
2) Apple is able to wield this massive leverage to get its way (more often than not at any rate). Recall how Apple used iTunes to get its way with music labels, or the iPhone to force carriers to accede to its terms. It may seem monopolistic in this day and age, but at the time, the ability to not have your phone bogged down with carrier branding or apps and being able to push updates effortlessly to the end user helped set it apart from Android handsets, and it was genuinely in the best interests of customers.
With Apple Pay, Apple once again utilises their control over hardware and software to great effect, from the software UX underpinning Apple Pay, to Touch / Face ID to secure enclave to having a billion credit cards stored in iTunes ready to be added to Apple Pay to integrating it with your iPhone and Apple Watch. It doesn't matter how good a service like PayPal is when it's simply an app on your phone that much be launched manually, vs say, launching Apple Pay on your watch to pay for a train ride or a meal at a cafe.
Credit card networks generally don't resent Apple Pay because it builds on their existing network, and it's easier to go along with Apple than risk the latter coming up with some custom solution that cuts them out entirely.
Banks are like carriers. Just as consumers were (at one point) willing to switch carriers just to use the iPhone, so too were users willing to switch to a bank that supported Apple Pay. Or at least, the idea is that banks fear this inevitability enough to hop on board and support Apple Pay.
3) This is where Apple's willingness to play the long game truly shines. Apple Pay is really a very nice service to use, Apple users are eager to use it, credit cards have no reason to not support it, and the hope is that banks and merchants fall in line for fear of losing customers. It doesn't always work, but you also see the progress Apple Pay has made over the years, and it's hard not to see Apple's guiding hand in all of this.
The only thing “special” about it is this deep integration with Apple hardware and Safari. It’s just a whole lot faster to use than a 3rd party app.
E.g. Costcos near me had finally implemented digital membership cards. But to use it, I have to start Costco app and manually go to Account tab. It’s not as convenient as just double tapping the side button.
You have got to remember when using the US as a basis for this opinion, that the US lags behind most of the western world for payments and electronic bank transactions in general.
By the time Apple Pay was released, contactless payments was already common and widespread throughout the UK and most of Europe.
The requirement for machines that are nfc capable for payments was already in place. Apple Pay allowed retailers to take payments from mobile phones with relative ease and no additional requirements.
For enough, the integration of Touch / FaceID and the credit cards stored on the phone is very convenient, but that applies to virtually every phone in the world now, doesn't it? And if people opt for cheaper phones that still use PIN's, what's it got to do with the cards stored on the phone?
This is where you lose me. What do you mean "a bank that supports Apple Pay"? If the shop has an NFC terminal it accepts contactless payments from any credit card that the seller accepts (MasterCard, Visa, Amex, etc.); what do the banks have to do with this, they are just a distributor. Banks cannot dictate which shops can accept the cards that they distribute, can they - that would be ludicrous.
And same with sellers, if a retailer has an NFC terminal, and they all do, what difference is it if you tap a card or an NFC-equipped phone? How a they discriminate whether the payment comes from an iPhone or a Samsung or a plastic card? What?
I think the problem may be the confusion with the branding. Apple uses the term Apple Pay for both. First, the rather mundane credit card storage and NFC-enabled payments on their phones. Which btw, the EU showed is not innovation, but gatekeeping - now ended so that other Wallet providers can get on the iPhone. And second, they use Apple Pay as the name for the button on websites - which is similar to Paypal except without the need to authenticate on another app (again, more gatekeeping than innovation), but I can see the technical and legal complexity of integrating a third party app deep into the OS.
Don't get me wrong I think being able to pay with my phone or my Watch is awesome, but not sure why this is called "Apple Pay" and not just, well, storing your credit cards on your phone.
Apple did not brand electronic boarding passes (Apple Board), or concert tickets (Apple Event), or Loyalty Cards (Apple Loyal) - because I think they recognised its all just data stored in a Wallet and branding that would be silly.
So yes, the Apple Wallet is great, Apple Pay is just - words that mean nothing to most people.
Yes, but at least Wal-Mart does provide a way to pay with your phone using any credit card through their app, albeit with the data collection caveats. Home Depot on the other hand provides no way to do any kind of mobile payment. Every time I go to the register there I have a ‘Doh!’ moment and have to run out to my car to grab a card.
Supposedly, Home Depot has enabled Apple Pay at a few locations in the past couple of weeks but a message their support folks posted on Reddit said that at this point they are just ‘exploring’ different payment options and there is no word on whether they’ll actually roll out Apple Pay company-wide.
I suspect Apple expected Apple Cash to be a lot more popular, and Apple Pay to be used hand in hand with it.
Maybe you're thinking of Apple Card. Apply Pay has been here for a long time.
It wasn't that straightforward for me. Apple Pay was announced in 2014, but I remembered that it came to Singapore only in 2016. I know I was excited to finally try it out on my 6S+, and so I also encountered the pain points early on.
Using Apple Pay: 6 things to know if you are paying with your mobile device
SINGAPORE - Almost all credit and debit card users in Singapore can now tap and pay with their mobile devices. Read more at straitstimes.com. Read more at straitstimes.com.
So it specifically needed the support of local banks to work, who in the very least, had the power to block users from adding their credit cards to the wallet app if they decided not to play ball.
Second, there was a $100 transaction cap which was gradually lifted.
Third, I know there were some outlets early on that accepted credit cards, but I couldn't pay with Apple Pay (the machine just couldn't recognise my phone).
I think that right now, Apple Pay is more or less synonymous with contactless payment (any terminal that accepts cards recognises Apple Pay), but it didn't start out that way, and things didn't just magically fall into place. Coordination likely had to be done behind the scenes to make it all work for the end user.
Now, just wishing my country would (finally) support express transit payment with my Apple Watch. I know, I sound spoilt for complaining about having to click on a button on my watch to pay for public transport, but sometimes, it's really the little things.... 😛
So there was no real innovation on Apple's part. They just leveraged this hardware+software ecosystem to push their "financial service" platform ahead of other services. I smell the European Commission coming in to fix this.
You may wish to elaborate on what you mean by “real innovation” then.
Software layer, biometrics, Secure Enclave, even hammering out deals with banks and other stakeholders is its own innovation in a sense, even if it doesn’t necessarily entail technology or hardware specs.
Heck, the reason why Apple is able to leverage their software / hardware ecosystem is because they were willing to invest in having an integrated ecosystem in the first place.
The EU would rather consumers suffer a worse user experience in the name of “fairness”.
The European has already mandated Apple to allow third party default Wallets. As they should.
Fix what ? You can use any bank c/c with Apple Pay. There’s no lock in. It’s just Apple’s marketing term for their NFC payment implementation.
The real advantage of AP is its integration with their devices, keychain, FaceID etc.
As to the EU - they are always ready to “fix” something that was developed outside of EU, but are rather shy to go after non-competitive practices of European giants like Siemens. So the extent of them “fixing” things is not as great as you may think - they don’t want to get the US and China into fixing mood.
And yet the European companies are allowed to remotely disable expensive equipment if customers use 3rd party repair parts, or if that equipment stops phoning home.
Seems that there’s some room for negotiation…
They finally started taking Apple Pay at my local HD last week, they’re rolling it out to all stores. They were the last holdout of my regular stores, so I’ve been ecstatic
That doesn't make Apple Pay inferior to Wechat pay. You can use Apple Pay almost anywhere in the world. You can only use Wechat Pay in China. And foreigners can't use it, you have to have a Chinese bank account. I have a Wechat account but couldn't use it when I was visiting my wife's family just this year. Also, Apple pay does not require expensive equipment by the merchant. You can get a Square NFC reader for less than 60 bucks. Apple Pay is now accepted by about 95% of retailers.
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Actually, no, not all banks allow their cards to be added to Apple Wallet, the bank has to have an agreement with Apple. But most of them do, in the US.
Thanks. All of mine do, so I didn’t realize not all of them did.
I’ve used Apple Pay on my trips to Europe without issues but then I was mainly in large cities. Germany seemed to be the main exception as they often required cash, but I was there the last time in 2018 so things may have changed.