Apple Pay = No Potential?

[AustinIllini]

The premise of this thread is wrong. The original thought was Apple Pay was a opt-in type program. It's not. It's an opt-out program. Soon, most retailers will have an NFC card reader which they will have to disable to prevent end users from using Apple Pay.

The only reason retailers are dropping out now are either 1) currently open contracts or 2) looking to mine data.

If NFC wins, which Android and iOS are counting on, Apple Pay and Google Wallet also wins. They are the heavy favorite to win.

 

[Newtons Apple]

Every major iPhone release has had a buzzworthy "wow" feature to it, something a bit unexpected to the average consumer.

Ask yourself, without Apple Pay, what would be compelling about the iPhone 6? It's thinner and faster, that's good. But is there something there that makes you go "cool, that's really awesome"?

Whether or not Apple Pay works over the long-term doesn't matter; what matters is that it's helped sell 30M iPhone's in a month which is really all it was intended to do.

BJ

The larger screen was good enough for me. Something I have been waiting for a long time. I had no idea what Apple Pay was until after my phone arrived.

Yep, size was important to me. (No jokes).

The 6 is what I had hoped the 5/5S would be.

 

[Mac'nCheese]

I think it's too early to say this but i think the potential of apple pay has been diminishing.

Major retailers are trying to avoid credit card transaction fees by creating their own payment processors, which allows them to directly access the funds of the customers.

Apple pay is basically a simplied version of credit cards

There is literally no chance that all small businesses will adopt NFC terminals.

What do you guys think?

I think it's the big businesses you have to worry about. The small businesses will adopt NFC, it's the big corporations that can make their own payments systems and spread them out among all their stores.

 

[JoeTomasone]

Thanks for the info. If their is no consumer protection using ACH, why would any consumer want to use that system? It would be safer for the consumer to swipe their debit and credit cards and not change what they are doing. I'm sure the merchants will not really mention that to their shoppers, except in very small print in the agreement. Sounds like most of those Current C agreements were made in 2011/12 and are locked for 3 years, so most could still dump this idea in 2015.

Exactly, and when you consider that CurrentC requires your Social Security Number to sign up... Who is really gonna trust their bank account info AND SSN to often-hacked merchants?

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Every time you use a Debit card today it links directly to your checking account.

And there are limits on how much can be spent per day, and a number that can be cancelled/changed if there is trouble. Not so much with ACH.

 

[12vElectronics]

I suggest you read up on it then.

Nah, not interested. Why waste time on something that's going to fail?

 

[tigress666]

There is an impression being given that the Merchants system CurrentC will link to your bank account and that is not already happening with existing Debit cards.

Does my existing debit card require I give out my bank account info so they can directly pull the money whenever they want from it (or any hacker can get that info and do the same)? Does it require I give them my SSN as well?

No?

Well, then there is your difference right there. I give them my debit card, they can only pull money from the transaction that I swiped my card and entered my pin. And they have no idea what my SSN is at all cause they don't need it. I give them my bank account info, and they have all they need to pull money from it whenever (which is what they are proposing. Give us info to your bank so we can directly pull the funds owed us when you buy stuff). Which also means so do the thieves if they break in.

Worse, I have to give them my SSN to store where thieves can get to it.

So, no, it's not the same.

 

[rui no onna]

I think it will be interesting to see what happens next October when merchants are forced to use chip and pin. That will be a different gesture than swiping, so everyone's habits will have to reset. And since chip and pin credit card will likely also include paypass and paywave, customers will likely try that more frequently (since the stripe is gone) and will likely get confused when it doesn't work.

True. Eventually, the retailers are probably going to have to give in and enable NFC for PayPass and payWave ergo de facto ApplePay support.

Personally to me this seems like the exact opposite of a free market. In a free market, both systems should be allowed to operate and people will use the one that suits their needs best. MCX is trying to prevent competition from operating at all

Unfortunately true. Alas, if retailers think these shenanigans will do CurrentC good, I believe they're sadly mistaken. Piss off your customers enough and they're more likely to buy from someone who makes spending money easy (e.g. Amazon). It's not just Apple Pay they stopped accepting by disabling NFC. It's payWave, PayPass and ExpressPay, too. Given how entrenched Amex/Visa/MC have been over the years, I don't really see CurrentC gaining ground particularly with all its cons. I don't think Apple Pay will ever make for majority of purchases but I do think we'll see more widespread acceptance within 2-3 years. I don't think it'll take all that long after the switch to chip and PIN before retailers enable NFC on their terminals to make purchasing more hassle-free for the consumer.

 

[wesk702]

Disagree.

Oct 2015 sees liability shift to retailers if they are still restricted to swipe vs higher form of EMV technology. EMV chip or EMV NFC.

Retailers will be upgrading terminals to support at least chip, and a large majority of new chip terminals, also have NFC baked in.

The hardware is coming at a rapid pace, even if there is evidence in the case of riteaid/cvs that the nfc functionality can be disabled, forcing chip use.

Americans are too tied to their overspending, dept, and credit cards to ditch on visa/mastercard/amex... To switch to tieing their checking account to the MCX system. Its dead on arrival.

This alone will help launch Applepay adoption. It's definitely more secure than CurrentC's half baked solution. I really want CurrentC to takeoff. Once there is a major breach, it'll bring all businesses to Applepay in a heartbeat.