I give it a week until south korea finds something to bitch about to try to protect their ****** samsung.
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Apple Pay Launches in South Korea
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i'm going to korea in May so this is great timing
Oh as a visitor you would have been able to use apple pay there anyway with your supported foreign card. The official launch only makes a difference for the locals, who were previously unable to use apple pay with any locally issued bank cards.
You do realize that the government there is a wholly owned subsidiary of Samsung.
Digital payments in South Korea are a cluster****.
- almost no stores support NFC
- those that do often do not accept foreign cards
- if you pay with a foreign card, there is a 50% chance it is declined
- some stores accept only card payments
- many vending machines and parking lots accept only card payments (good luck as a foreigner trying to leave an automated parking lot)
- the Seoul metro has their own contactless payment system that you have to charge with cash bills (no card payments)
- lots of ATMs reject foreign cards, or have a tiny limit
With that background, it's not surprising that Apple Pay rollout has been rocky, and I doubt support for Apple Pay will be as ubiquitous as it is in Europe any time soon.
- almost no stores support NFC
- those that do often do not accept foreign cards
- if you pay with a foreign card, there is a 50% chance it is declined
- some stores accept only card payments
- many vending machines and parking lots accept only card payments (good luck as a foreigner trying to leave an automated parking lot)
- the Seoul metro has their own contactless payment system that you have to charge with cash bills (no card payments)
- lots of ATMs reject foreign cards, or have a tiny limit
With that background, it's not surprising that Apple Pay rollout has been rocky, and I doubt support for Apple Pay will be as ubiquitous as it is in Europe any time soon.
Apple pay is probably one of the Apple based services I use the most after Apple music. This is something Apple definitely got right.
That said, I primarily use my Apple Watch for Apple Pay. Sometimes I use my phone, but for the most part, it's the watch. So much so that I usually keep one or 2 cards in my wallet (a debit MC and my Amex) as a back up and leave the others in my backpack. If for some reason I want to use a different card (I frequent Costco, and while my debit is a MC, Costco is Visa or debit purchase with pin) I don't have to worry about having a phalanx of cards with me.
This also makes it easier when running out to the store for something quick.
The other day I DID use my phone for Apple Pay because I was working on my car and had to make a parts run. I don't wear a watch or jewelry when turning wrenches.
Apple Pay is one of the best things that have come about in the post Jobs era, along with the watch. The two complement each other tremendously.
I mean, SK does seem pretty similar to 2014-15 US with the lack of NFC infrastructure and the seeming dislike of anything Visa or MC by merchants (I presume domestic cards run over some other network or are otherwise capped interchange-wise). Though at least merchants in the US haven't outright started blocking foreign cards.
Anyway, the upside is that SK could very well end up with somewhat usable contactless adoption if it goes similarly to how it happened in the US. Not 100%, of course, and could very well never get there--but it's definitely premature to rule anything out.
In South Korea, there’s already plenty of NFC terminals but they only accept T-money cards and the physical contactless credit cards, Samsung Pay but not Apple Pay.
Samsung is partly to blame for stores not supporting nfc. Because of the damn MST merchants could take SPay without ugrading nfc, so they saved their money and didn’t upgrade. The same happened in Mexico and now that Apple Pay is officially here, people are suffering to use it. Thank you, Samsung, for stifling technological evolution.
If those terminals take the physical contactless credit cards then they take apple pay too. There’s nothing specific that would need to be done on an nfc capable terminal for it to accept apple pay. As long as the terminal has nfc contactless and takes contactless cards it will take apple pay too unless the apple pay user tries to use a card issued on a network not honored by the store such as the american Discover or Amex networks (just as would be the case with a physical card not accepted).
Maybe. But I've tried Walmart Pay, just out of curiosity. It's not faster or simpler than just getting out my credit card, which is the biggest drawback IMO. If I have to dig out my phone, and open the app - I can just as easily (easier, really) dig out my wallet and pull out my credit card.
Wal-Mart, Lowe's, and Home Depot seem to be the biggest hold-outs, at least among the stores I regularly visit. Sam's Club too I guess, but with them I use their app to scan the items as I add them to the cart & just head for the exit, so that at least is actually SIMPLER than Apple Pay.
Yeah I’m not dedicated to the idea that they must support Apple Pay specifically. I am not crazy about the QR code system at Walmart or QR based systems in general. It’s slow, but not because of the QR code reading. It then takes several seconds to process the payment. I also like that Walmart skips the physical receipt. Easier for me, cheaper and more secure for them.
For me it’s not so much that it’s any faster, it’s just one less physical card to have to carry and insert into potential skimmers and things like that. I do actually find it more convenient than having to deal with the card reader, especially since if they don’t support Apple Pay they probably don’t support NFC bank cards either.
Its only convenient at places that accept it. And Lowes, Walmart, Home Depot, Sam’s and Amazon don’t.
Correct, Walmart doesn’t support NFC bank cards or anything else that uses NFC. They’re chip only. They even went so far as to block Samsung Pay, which used to work at their stores through the old magnetic stripe readers in the absence of NFC.