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Apple Partnering With American Express to Bring Apple Pay to Canada, Australia, Spain, Singapore and Hong Kong
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Most consumers use Bank provided MasterCards or Visas in Australia. Myself, mastercard. Totally correct about AMEX though, barely anyone uses them here.
Their not on a moral high horse... they just don't want to have to pay the same amount per transaction as American banks when they make *significantly* less per transaction to begin with. Both Apple and Australian banks have valid points.
Apple Pay doesn't require a fingerprint. A passcode works as well. And there's no way to guarantee that the fingerprint being used belongs to the cardholder (although it's a good bet). But yes, it's far better than nothing.
The problem is that any extra verification gained at the cost of paying Apple, is still not worthwhile to the banks who long ago moved to chip cards. Not even close.
For example, in the UK, contactless fraud rates are almost invisible at only about 0.007% of transaction value. That's twenty times less than the 0.150% that Apple gets in the US.
So from the contactless security standpoint, there's no incentive for a bank to support Apple Pay with its far higher costs than the fraud rate.
Instead, the main reason banks like Apple Pay is that it's another form of contactless purchase, and those usually get people to spend about 20% more, due to the way that it doesn't feel like spending "real" money. Still not a huge incentive though.
Yet UK banks signed agreements with Apple anyway. They could have said "no" but the math still worked out in their favor.
Yeah, but which math? Obviously not the fraud rate alone.
It sure seems that Barclay Bank, for instance, only caved in due to customer pressure.
Sounds like people actually want Apple Pay and are willing to switch banks to get it. Shocker, I know.
Nothing is shocking when it comes to Apple fans
A downside is that thousands of smaller banks and credit unions... who operate on very thin margins as it is... are unable to participate.
Nothing is shocking when it comes to Apple fans
A downside is that thousands of smaller banks and credit unions... who operate on very thin margins as it is... are unable to participate.
Credit unions usually contract with a company like PSCU to handle their cards, so the backend part isn't the problem. I'd also go as far as to say that if a credit union or bank is relying on interchange to make up for revenue shortfalls, they aren't well-run.
Maybe is your card - get a new one. I rarely have issues. When I do have issues its in the same locations.
Definitely agreeing with the general "Australians don't use AMEX" statement - not saying it doesn't exist, but it's rare. But hopefully this is a good first step, and hopefully the major banks will suck it up soon. I'd definitely use Apple Pay every day.
AMEX is accepted at 90% of the places I shop.
Technically speaking:
if a retailer supports EMV contactless payments and also supports Amex non-contactless as a form of payment, then you can use Apple Pay.
The reason there are places where Amex Tap & Pay doesn't work is because Amex was a bit late to the game with introducing their tap to pay solution. So when it came out there were already tap and pay terminals not taking into account AMEX.
Apple Pay with Amex will be useable at any tap and pay terminal.
Wait... are you seriously trying to say that it's the cost of doing business with Apple that is preventing small banks/credit unions from participating in NFC secure payments? Look at some of the small potato credit unions on this list.Nothing is shocking when it comes to Apple fans
A downside is that thousands of smaller banks and credit unions... who operate on very thin margins as it is... are unable to participate.
Eaton Family Credit Union
First Bank of Newton
East Texas Professional Credit Union
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204916
You either have an ax to grind with Apple or are willfully ignoring banks' bigger issues why they aren't participating. Size isn't one of them.
With that leaked TD Apple Pay page, I'd say the banks are coming pretty soon. Hopefully it's still November, like the WSJ was saying. I mean, why would TD go through the time to build graphics and pages for their Apple Pay support if it wasn't coming soon?
Amex is my primary card here in Canada but 7 out of 10 times retailers don't accept it so I end up using my visa. So my primary card is a visa by default and RBC should hurry and roll this out asap. I don't know why its taking so long? Maybe they are having a hard time figuring out who gets a piece of the transaction pie? We had chip reader for years, I cannot imagine it being hard for banks to implement this and roll out. Apple pay will be here in November they say? Reading this article, sounds like its more like november 2016.
A big problem will be merchant support and the current inefficiencies of the electronic banking system in the country. Let's say Singapore. In the US, most stores only have one machine that supports all cards. In Singapore, a grocery store can have 3 to 4 different machines per check stand just to support the various banks/cards. Imagine trying to have the merchant to support another form of payment.
Or probably NOT.... what a ridiculous statement....
American Express was once a highly regarded credit card, used by the wealthy of the world.
Today AmEx is fighting for sheer survival. There is a serious possibility they will fold. The financiers and investors of the world know this, I can't believe Apple doesn't know it or are so high on their success they feel untouchable.
When AmEx lost Costco worldwide that may have been the last straw.
Apple connecting with AmEx is a mind boggling move.
This promises to be very interesting.
Today AmEx is fighting for sheer survival. There is a serious possibility they will fold. The financiers and investors of the world know this, I can't believe Apple doesn't know it or are so high on their success they feel untouchable.
When AmEx lost Costco worldwide that may have been the last straw.
Apple connecting with AmEx is a mind boggling move.
This promises to be very interesting.
Because they know, as Apple knows, that most people are barking up the wrong tree. It is not abut making a more efficient or more secure transaction. Apple just needs to make sure its experience is, at a minimum, no worse. If you can stop off at the grocery store on the way from the gym with no wallet and pay using your watch, that's a "surprise and delight" bonus - but it's not the underlying goal.
Credit cards are themselves just a token, a shortcut saying you are you. It turns out that these tokens have become progressively easier to manufacture - and copy, and clone. It's obvious they will disappear. Saying you are you is what the Watch is about. Identification and authentication are the real battlegrounds. All the rest are just facets of this problem.
All the heat and light about contactless and Chip & PIN and all the rest misses the long term destination, which is we will not use these arbitrary pieces of plastic to identify that we are good for the money - which is, after all, what a credit or debit card's real function is. We will use the computers in our pockets and on our wrists - the latter being the 0.1 beta of a thing that knows who we are because it's physically touching us.
But, no one knows what we will use. For the banks, the Apple Pay tax - I think it averages around 0.15% - may be cheap insurance to find out. In markets like Australia where interchange fees are already very low, it may turn out that 15bps is more than the incumbent banks want to pay. In markets like the US, clearly that was not the case. But that is the decision. For a company like American Express, where a considerable and yet indefinable part of the value is the presentation of a card in a shop or restaurant that (they like to imagine) says something about you in the same way that having an iPhone says something about you, and your choice of clothing brands says something about you - this is going to be a huge challenge, as the card itself disappears. If you offer an undifferentiated transactional experience, and the one way you establish your brand is a piece of plastic that is going to go away, you have a big problem. How much would you pay to be a part of trying to find the solution?
Interesting. I travel to Montreal all the time, and use my corporate Amex card exclusively there.
AmEx has challenges right now, sure, but them folding? That sounds like hyperbole. (Also I thought they just lost Costco in Canada and the US.)