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lol. Way to make a girl feel special!! (...honestly never been called a troll before). hahaha. (but something tells me that you weren't referring to my looks, somehow, but I'll let that slide!). Just to clarify though, I am indeed English (both by birth, and every generation before me), so lived in the UK for the vast majority of my life, until I got married. But you're partly correct in the sense that I no longer live in the UK anymore. I was born in Worcestershire though (if you know where that is?), but now live permanently in Greece with my Husband who is Greek (hence the username). But as I am British, and can't apply for a local bank account over here so easily, all my banks and credit cards are still my UK ones, so I still take an interest in how they are developing, as it affects me directly. Am truly gutted that they don't have ApplePay out here though yet, so am curious to know how well the UK rollout for it is going so far since I've been away? Has it become mainstream yet, or are many companies still slow to adopt?

Anyways, in answer to your question, being British, I do know HSBC, and am delighted to hear from you that at least some banks are using it in the way that I've always thought was just common sense. (not all banks do though, yet). For example, I bank with Nationwide and Halifax, and while I do rate them both extremely well as banks, and they both have excellent iPhone apps, they still use their own form of authentication, so naturally me being a fan of TouchID, I'm hoping that someday the banks I use will incorporate it aswell. But thankyou for letting me know that the API does support the functionality in the way I perceived it (I might have to write to my banks, and let them know, because if what I suspect is true, and it just being things like them not thinking it's secure enough that is holding them back, then we might be able to give them the nudge they need to get with the 21st century, and just implement it already! And thankyou for letting me know that HSBC is already using it. If I tell them that, it might also help, as I'm sure they won't wanna get left behind! (and it certainly removes all the excuses).

Forgive me for going off on such a tangent though. In answer to your original question, you raised a very good point about the banks possibly not covering you in such a situation where somebody stole your wallet and spent some money via the contactless payment method. Fortunately this has never happened to me, but I wouldn't fancy my chances of being reimbursed in such an event, so you're probably right.

Anyways, do let me know how things are going with the ApplePay stuff. It's nice to keep in touch with people who still live in the UK, to see what's changed since I left. I bet it's a very different place now.

It's very mainstream here. Even my local small and ploey corner shop has contactless. A brand new polish supermarket opened up in an old Peacocks and has CL and AP.

I posted above about what one of my banks said to me when I got my wallet stolen lately. I am loving the fact I have an Iphone SE so 4 inch phone. Often even I forget it's in my inside coat pocket so chances of anyone else knowing I have it is slim to none.
 
It's very mainstream here. Even my local small and ploey corner shop has contactless. A brand new polish supermarket opened up in an old Peacocks and has CL and AP.

I posted above about what one of my banks said to me when I got my wallet stolen lately. I am loving the fact I have an Iphone SE so 4 inch phone. Often even I forget it's in my inside coat pocket so chances of anyone else knowing I have it is slim to none.
Thanks for the heads up! Nice to know that it seems to be catching on! (as you can probably tell, I'm a big fan of the entire ApplePay concept, and I really hope this does becomes established as a payment standard everywhere at some point).

Speaking of which, I did an interesting experiment the other day, so thought I would share it with everybody in case anyone else was curious. Basically, after noticing that ApplePay says it works wherever you see the contactless payment symbol, it gave me an idea....

The experiment was to see if even though ApplePay wasn't officially released over here in Greece where I now live, but some of the bigger companies over here have already adopted contactless payment terminals (which are official Visa and Mastercard machines), I was curious as to whether ApplePay might still work anyway due to those machines perhaps being ApplePay ready. (after all, if they are using the same contactless communication technology anyway, and ApplePay is just a digital representation of the exact same cards, that maybe, just maybe.... I mean, it was worth a try, right?). For the moment it's only the big chain stores that have those machines here yet anyway, but if it worked I would have considered that a win, and at the very least a huge step in the right direction. Unfortunately though, it was not the case. (admittedly, it was a long shot anyway, especially as t wasn't officially released anywhere but UK, USA, and possibly China, and I knew that most of the rest of the world are still waiting for it. But it would have been an awesome discovery though, if it had!)

But certainly all this has got me thinking, and this brings me to another idea, that maybe Apple could benefit from if they happen to be reading this...

One really efficient way they could use in order to help it catch on in a more worldwide level, (as I know it would surely take time to have to negotiate this with every bank of every country) but it might be quicker in the interim to negotiate with companies like Visa and Mastercard to have the technology supported as standard on their machines. (after all, it is only software anyway, so firmware upgrades to the card terminals would likely be a much more efficient way to implement it than to expect every vendor to have to replace their actual machines (especially as many would have already had to do that when contactless came out, so there may be some reluctance to have to go do that all over again).

Of course, until the banks themselves accept it, it would still be limited to be used by customers whose banks have adopted the standard, so ultimately the goal would be to eventually to get the banks themselves all doing that in the end. But the advantage here is that in the interim, all the international customers of every country (think tourists, and expats like myself) would be able to start using the technology right away, so would be helpful to shop owners in that sense, as they would be able to accept more forms of payment for their goods and services. Plus the ripple effect of more widespread usage can be encouraging to get the banks to see it catching on, and therefore are more likely to want to support it for their local customers once they can see that it is becoming popular in a physical sense. (Sometimes you have to make ripples to make waves).

For the same reason, I believe that when you want big things to happen, the first step is to talk about it, and put the idea out there. So please forgive me for waffling on so much about this, but I dream so much about exciting future stuff like this actually happening, and I would love this to become a reality so much, that I just couldn't keep these thoughts to myself.
 
The experiment was to see if even though ApplePay wasn't officially released over here in Greece where I now live, but some of the bigger companies over here have already adopted contactless payment terminals (which are official Visa and Mastercard machines), I was curious as to whether ApplePay might still work anyway due to those machines perhaps being ApplePay ready. (after all, if they are using the same contactless communication technology anyway, and ApplePay is just a digital representation of the exact same cards, that maybe, just maybe.... I mean, it was worth a try, right?). For the moment it's only the big chain stores that have those machines here yet anyway, but if it worked I would have considered that a win, and at the very least a huge step in the right direction. Unfortunately though, it was not the case. (admittedly, it was a long shot anyway, especially as t wasn't officially released anywhere but UK, USA, and possibly China, and I knew that most of the rest of the world are still waiting for it. But it would have been an awesome discovery though, if it had!)

I may be misremembering, but I'm sure I used my Apple Pay here in Austria when I forgot my purse one day? If it weren't for the charges I'd willing try again tomorrow!
 
Even though I've not used ApplePay outside of the U.K. (yet) I'd imagine anywhere in the World that has NFC payment terminals it should, theoretically, work.

I remember a few years ago my UK contactless card didn't work in Germany, but now it does work when travelling, so perhaps it depends on which software is on the payment terminal? (The card is due for an update this summer so it is the same one.)
 
Even though I've not used ApplePay outside of the U.K. (yet) I'd imagine anywhere in the World that has NFC payment terminals it should, theoretically, work.

Apple Pay worked in the UK with US cards/accounts before the service was available here. I thought it worked the way you describe; with transaction fees being the bigger hurdle.
 
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TOne really efficient way they could use in order to help it catch on in a more worldwide level, (as I know it would surely take time to have to negotiate this with every bank of every country) but it might be quicker in the interim to negotiate with companies like Visa and Mastercard to have the technology supported as standard on their machines.

The contactless technology is already supported as standard on Visa/MC/AMEX/Discover terminals.

This is because it was Visa/MC/AMEX/Discover who wrote the payment applets stored in the Secure Element. It was Visa/MC/AMEX/Discover who designed and implemented their tokenization. Not Apple.

The much simpler part that Apple did, was a pretty normal payment UI, with an interface to the passcode or fingerprint verification. Everything else is done by the card specific applets provisioned in the Secure Element.

Thus, because it is using standard payment methods, Apple Pay should've worked almost anywhere on the planet immediately. That is, it could have --- if only Apple had been content with profiting from the hardware sale (and perhaps a fee for card registration). However, they were not.

Of course, until the banks themselves accept it, it would still be limited to be used by customers whose banks have adopted the standard, ...

You have it backwards. Apple is the holdup, not the banks. You see, Apple came up with a most wonderfully greedy idea:

Apple decided to sell access to their customers to each bank, by preventing iPhone users from registering their cards unless each card's issuing bank first agreed to pay Apple a continuous blackmail fee consisting of a percentage of that customer's purchases.

So the big delay now, is that most countries have seen that Apple Pay does not bring in that many customers, and so their banks have banded together to refuse and/or make a better deal than the initially naive first banks did.
 
I may be misremembering, but I'm sure I used my Apple Pay here in Austria when I forgot my purse one day? If it weren't for the charges I'd willing try again tomorrow!
Very interesting! In that case, I won't give up trying! I'm going to have a go at other places and see if I can get any to work! Was Austria one of the official countries that announced compatibility? (or was it just that you found it worked anyway, based on the fact that the technology accepted it?)

The contactless technology is already supported as standard on Visa/MC/AMEX/Discover terminals.

This is because it was Visa/MC/AMEX/Discover who wrote the payment applets stored in the Secure Element. It was Visa/MC/AMEX/Discover who designed and implemented their tokenization. Not Apple.

The much simpler part that Apple did, was a pretty normal payment UI, with an interface to the passcode or fingerprint verification. Everything else is done by the card specific applets provisioned in the Secure Element.

Thus, because it is using standard payment methods, Apple Pay should've worked almost anywhere on the planet immediately. That is, it could have --- if only Apple had been content with profiting from the hardware sale (and perhaps a fee for card registration). However, they were not.
Interesting stuff! Thanks for enlightening me on how this was done! -I'm glad at least the technology terminal ability is already in place. It means at least that there is only one last obstacle to overcome before this can be readily usable as a general payment option standard. In some ways, perhaps it's better that it's not the banks that are the holdup, as I'd imagine that having to negotiate with each of them individually would be a herculean task, with no guarantee of results, as that would require decisions from just too many different entities, and would have been much a more complicated thing to standardize. But if the only holdup is just something Apple hasn't done yet, then it means there is hope, as only one decision maker is required to tweak something in order to overcome the obstacle, so (in theory) increases the odds of it happening. (On the other hand, this is Apple we're talking about, and I know they can be stubborn at times.) Don't get me wrong, sometimes that can be a good thing (sticking up for our civil liberties when it came to not letting governments use our iPhones to turn us all into the next Orwellian state is one example that I'm thankful for), but other times it's just darn right frustrating! (Simple things like supporting simple file and folder management in the unified way that nearly every other device on the planet does, but I digress...)

On the other hand, while it frustrates me, and i wish there was a better way of doing it, I can see legitimate reasons why the standard file management system was never implemented (part of the reason why iOS devices are much less susceptible to viruses is because you can't just go plonking any old file onto it that may infect your machine, thus making the need for performance hogging antivirus software (with evergrowing lists of antivirus definitions to loop through) just bogging down your machine, like it tends to on laptops and desktops. So there is at least some benefit to not letting the machines get virused in the first place, and at least there was some method to the madness on that one. (I still think we need to re-evaluate how we do it though, so that there we can come up with a best of both worlds method, rather than just throwing out the baby with the bathwater and blanket banning everything in case it may get misused. ...but that's a different topic for a different day, which I may make a separate post about sometime).

But with ApplePay though, knowing that Apple do passionately want their payment technology to become mainstream, and given that there's only one hurdle which is a decision within their control, and that this decision wouldn't accompany such negative tradeoffs as some of the other controversial things they've had to be stubborn on, there is a chance that they may realize that it's a pretty simple fix, and they could finally have want they want, and make us all happy in the process.

You have it backwards. Apple is the holdup, not the banks. You see, Apple came up with a most wonderfully greedy idea:

Apple decided to sell access to their customers to each bank, by preventing iPhone users from registering their cards unless each card's issuing bank first agreed to pay Apple a continuous blackmail fee consisting of a percentage of that customer's purchases.

So the big delay now, is that most countries have seen that Apple Pay does not bring in that many customers, and so their banks have banded together to refuse and/or make a better deal than the initially naive first banks did.
Ouch! What were the fees like? if it is true that they're charging additional fees for the service, and that this is the obstacle holding it all up, then this method of implementation clearly needs to be reassessed. Okay, I get that nothing in life is free, and that it costs money to pay for the staff that regulate and maintain the systems and that all this has to be paid for somehow, but I agree with what another user on here said whereby if perhaps there was a one-off set-up fee that could be paid for by people like myself who want to use it. That said, I disagree with paying for it on a per-transaction basis though. I think if each transaction became more expensive as a result, that would seriously negate the benefits. But if it was just a one-time fee when you register each card, I think I could live with that tradeoff, and it would still be worthwhile. (of course it would be nice it it was all free though, and even that could eventually be possible by automating alot of what costs the money. But again, a different topic for a different day).
 
Very interesting! In that case, I won't give up trying! I'm going to have a go at other places and see if I can get any to work! Was Austria one of the official countries that announced compatibility? (or was it just that you found it worked anyway, based on the fact that the technology accepted it?)


Interesting stuff! Thanks for enlightening me on how this was done! -I'm glad at least the technology terminal ability is already in place. It means at least that there is only one last obstacle to overcome before this can be readily usable as a general payment option standard. In some ways, perhaps it's better that it's not the banks that are the holdup, as I'd imagine that having to negotiate with each of them individually would be a herculean task, with no guarantee of results, as that would require decisions from just too many different entities, and would have been much a more complicated thing to standardize. But if the only holdup is just something Apple hasn't done yet, then it means there is hope, as only one decision maker is required to tweak something in order to overcome the obstacle, so (in theory) increases the odds of it happening. (On the other hand, this is Apple we're talking about, and I know they can be stubborn at times.) Don't get me wrong, sometimes that can be a good thing (sticking up for our civil liberties when it came to not letting governments use our iPhones to turn us all into the next Orwellian state is one example that I'm thankful for), but other times it's just darn right frustrating! (Simple things like supporting simple file and folder management in the unified way that nearly every other device on the planet does, but I digress...)

On the other hand, while it frustrates me, and i wish there was a better way of doing it, I can see legitimate reasons why the standard file management system was never implemented (part of the reason why iOS devices are much less susceptible to viruses is because you can't just go plonking any old file onto it that may infect your machine, thus making the need for performance hogging antivirus software (with evergrowing lists of antivirus definitions to loop through) just bogging down your machine, like it tends to on laptops and desktops. So there is at least some benefit to not letting the machines get virused in the first place, and at least there was some method to the madness on that one. (I still think we need to re-evaluate how we do it though, so that there we can come up with a best of both worlds method, rather than just throwing out the baby with the bathwater and blanket banning everything in case it may get misused. ...but that's a different topic for a different day, which I may make a separate post about sometime).

But with ApplePay though, knowing that Apple do passionately want their payment technology to become mainstream, and given that there's only one hurdle which is a decision within their control, and that this decision wouldn't accompany such negative tradeoffs as some of the other controversial things they've had to be stubborn on, there is a chance that they may realize that it's a pretty simple fix, and they could finally have want they want, and make us all happy in the process.


Ouch! What were the fees like? if it is true that they're charging additional fees for the service, and that this is the obstacle holding it all up, then this method of implementation clearly needs to be reassessed. Okay, I get that nothing in life is free, and that it costs money to pay for the staff that regulate and maintain the systems and that all this has to be paid for somehow, but I agree with what another user on here said whereby if perhaps there was a one-off set-up fee that could be paid for by people like myself who want to use it. That said, I disagree with paying for it on a per-transaction basis though. I think if each transaction became more expensive as a result, that would seriously negate the benefits. But if it was just a one-time fee when you register each card, I think I could live with that tradeoff, and it would still be worthwhile. (of course it would be nice it it was all free though, and even that could eventually be possible by automating alot of what costs the money. But again, a different topic for a different day).

The theory is it comes out of the banks cut of interchange fees, and is funded by reduced fraud costs.
 
Very interesting! In that case, I won't give up trying! I'm going to have a go at other places and see if I can get any to work! Was Austria one of the official countries that announced compatibility? (or was it just that you found it worked anyway, based on the fact that the technology accepted?

Austria doesn't have Apple Pay yet, it's not been announced that it's in the works even (though I really hope it is). I checked before hand if the place had an NFC terminal, the lady said it did and was brand new (which gave me hope), I paid with my watch and she practically danced a jig after discovering I didn't have a card hidden up my sleeve. Very grateful it worked as otherwise I would have been really hungry!
 
I was in Singapore airport last year and paid for my lunch with Apple Pay with my UK Santander card. It was just a standard contactless terminal and it came up as Singapore dollars in my wallet app.
IMG_1555.jpg
 
Very interesting! In that case, I won't give up trying! I'm going to have a go at other places and see if I can get any to work!

The key is still that your card's bank has to have made a deal with Apple (and unless they hire it out like many do, also create a back end computer interface so iPhone users can register their cards via Apple's servers... which should be unnecessary, but it allows Apple to keep track of, and control, which cards should be paying them a percentage).

In other words, Apple Pay is like having a car that runs on standard gasoline. In theory it should be able to use standard gasoline anywhere. But Apple's car is made with a fuel fill door that will only unlock if a particular gas station brand has agreed to give Apple part of what you spend for gas. In return, the gas station gets access to Apple's customers and gets to keep all the usual purchase information they got before.

In some ways, perhaps it's better that it's not the banks that are the holdup, as I'd imagine that having to negotiate with each of them individually would be a herculean task, with no guarantee of results,

Apple does have to make a deal with each individual bank. Luckily for them, if one major bank in a country does so, then the rest often feel they have to make a deal as well. That's what finally happened with Barclay's in the UK.

But banks have gotten smarter. They realize that Apple needs them more than they need Apple. Unlike the US and UK, Canadian and Australian banks so far have stuck together, and are no doubt negotiating with Apple for lower / no fees at all.

Note also: the initial three year contract in the US is running out soon. It's a good bet the banks will be more hardcore in their renegotiations now that they have a better handle on things.

What were the fees like?

In the US, Apple demanded 0.15% of every purchase. While major US banks, with little previous customer verification and deep pockets (~2.0% per transaction) were able to justify (and later, regret) this, the rest of the world is not so well off. For that matter, it even hurts US credit unions and other small low profit banks.

Contactless fees in many EU countries such as France are only around 0.22%. The UK, which might be capping theirs soon the same way, is currently 0.65%. Either way, giving Apple 0.15% is impossible to support. Word is that UK banks ended up negotiating less than half the fee that US banks pay.

In Canada, the debit card fee is $0.006 (6/10ths of a penny) per transaction. In the US, Apple demands 1/2 cent per debit transaction, or what would be almost the entire Canadian fee.

All of this is just the tip of the Apple Pay iceberg. Banks also have to pay Visa/MC etc for tokenization services per transaction. For example, MC charges $0.50 for provisioning a token, and $0.025 per token API call.

The banks also have to hire extra help centers for Apple Pay. Moreover, they have to give Apple constant reports about purchase types and places... financial information that was formerly proprietary.

At least Mastercard etc. earn their transaction fees by doing something active. OTOH, Apple itself has no such costs during a transaction, since they only provide the device (which they already made a huge profit on). Their fee is basically a charge for access to their users (a classic the-customer-is-the-product scenario).

The theory is it comes out of the banks cut of interchange fees, and is funded by reduced fraud costs.

In longtime contactless places like the UK, contactless payment fraud is only running at about 0.007% of the purchase amount.

That fraud rate is less than 1/20th of what Apple gets in the US per transaction (0.15%). So, as far as contactless fraud goes, it's still much cheaper for banks to keep things as they are.

Where something like Apple Pay could make a huge difference in fraud, is if it was used for online purchases.
 
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Word is that UK banks ended up negotiating half the fee that US banks paid.

In longtime contactless places like the UK, contactless payment fraud is only running at about 0.007% of the purchase amount.

That fraud rate is less than 1/20th of what Apple gets in the US per transaction (0.15%). So, as far as contactless fraud goes, it's still much cheaper for banks to keep things as they are.

Where something like Apple Pay could make a huge difference in fraud, is if it was used for online purchases.

Like I said that was the theory; but you already said it, in other countries they've had pushback ranging from smaller fees to refusal to sign up at all
 
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I suspect fee negotiations is why we're still waiting for Barclaycard Visa Cashback to be supported (and why their Cashback Amex is not expected to be supported) whereas their standard (no cashback card) is already supported within Apple Pay.
 
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Given Barclaycard are in the process of ditching MasterCard branded cards in favour of Visa I wonder if that's (potentially) one of the reasons they are in no rush to support American Express Cashback cards on Apple Pay?
 
Given Barclaycard are in the process of ditching MasterCard branded cards in favour of Visa I wonder if that's (potentially) one of the reasons they are in no rush to support American Express Cashback cards on Apple Pay?

Because I spoke to my mum, David Cameron did something...

Why would ditching mastercards affect AMEX ones?
 
Because I spoke to my mum, David Cameron did something...

Why would ditching mastercards affect AMEX ones?

Because (at some point in the next couple of years) the interchange fee cap that's currently in place for Visa/MasterCard *could* also apply to third-party branded issued AmEx cards, that's why.
 
Given Barclaycard are in the process of ditching MasterCard branded cards in favour of Visa I wonder if that's (potentially) one of the reasons they are in no rush to support American Express Cashback cards on Apple Pay?
My suspicion is that the 1% cash back on this card makes it very difficult for Barclaycard to find enough profit in the card for them to also pay Apple their transaction fee. The 0.5% on the Visa card probably leaves them a little more headroom hence it is being described as "coming very soon".

A
 
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My suspicion is that the 1% cash back on this card makes it very difficult for Barclaycard to find enough profit in the card for them to also pay Apple their transaction fee. The 0.5% on the Visa card probably leaves them a little more headroom hence it is being described as "coming very soon".

A

i doubt it, A, the transaction fees collected from the merchant on an AMEX are much higher than a visa.
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I was in Singapore airport last year and paid for my lunch with Apple Pay with my UK Santander card. It was just a standard contactless terminal and it came up as Singapore dollars in my wallet app.
View attachment 626407

i did that in hong kong with a visa credit card; it never went through despite showing on my transactions. i basically stole from that 7-eleven. :/
 
The key is still that your card's bank has to have made a deal with Apple (and unless they hire it out like many do, also create a back end computer interface so iPhone users can register their cards via Apple's servers... which should be unnecessary, but it allows Apple to keep track of, and control, which cards should be paying them a percentage).
Fortunately, my banks do (they're all UK banks, which currently support ApplePay, and those card are already registered to my iPhone) However, the problem for me is that the country I now live (Greece) does not do that yet. So the missing link in the chain for me personally is still the banks of the places I shop at. Good to know that their terminals are capable for if and when they do, but it's looking more and more that as the local banks belonging to the vendors that I shop at on the receiving end due to not having been signed up to the whole ApplePay system, is why despite those other two things being in place, that it still doesn't work over here yet, even with cards and machines that are physically capable of using it from that end). But all this is a very interesting discussion, and thankyou for your very knowledgeable input on all this.

Apple does have to make a deal with each individual bank. Luckily for them, if one major bank in a country does so, then the rest often feel they have to make a deal as well. That's what finally happened with Barclay's in the UK.

But banks have gotten smarter. They realize that Apple needs them more than they need Apple. Unlike the US and UK, Canadian and Australian banks so far have stuck together, and are no doubt negotiating with Apple for lower / no fees at all.

Note also: the initial three year contract in the US is running out soon. It's a good bet the banks will be more hardcore in their renegotiations now that they have a better handle on things.
Yeah, I totally agree with you here. When one competitor does something, its almost inevitable that the others get scared of falling behind and follow suit. On the point of the banks noticing the cost flaw and getting more hardcore in their negotiations though, while in the interim the downside is that this is making things take longer, the positive flipside to that same coin is that it may have the effect where the method of implementation gets re-evaluated out of necessity (in other words, where Apple begin to realize that the method used for their pricing mechanism is their only obstacle in the way of its global success, and are able to rework it in a way that's more cost effective for both parties, so these negotiations are likely to bring these factors to light, and the eventual outcome of the negotiations has a shot at reaching the win/win solution it needs.

In the US, Apple demanded 0.15% of every purchase. While major US banks, with little previous customer verification and deep pockets (~2.0% per transaction) were able to justify (and later, regret) this, the rest of the world is not so well off. For that matter, it even hurts US credit unions and other small low profit banks.

Contactless fees in many EU countries such as France are only around 0.22%. The UK, which might be capping theirs soon the same way, is currently 0.65%. Either way, giving Apple 0.15% is impossible to support. Word is that UK banks ended up negotiating less than half the fee that US banks pay.

In Canada, the debit card fee is $0.006 (6/10ths of a penny) per transaction. In the US, Apple demands 1/2 cent per debit transaction, or what would be almost the entire Canadian fee.

All of this is just the tip of the Apple Pay iceberg. Banks also have to pay Visa/MC etc for tokenization services per transaction. For example, MC charges $0.50 for provisioning a token, and $0.025 per token API call.

The banks also have to hire extra help centers for Apple Pay. Moreover, they have to give Apple constant reports about purchase types and places... financial information that was formerly proprietary.

At least Mastercard etc. earn their transaction fees by doing something active. OTOH, Apple itself has no such costs during a transaction, since they only provide the device (which they already made a huge profit on). Their fee is basically a charge for access to their users (a classic the-customer-is-the-product scenario).
Very good point. On the costs side of the equation, Apple's is pretty much already taken care of (besides the initial development of the technology, is automatically self replicated via the regular iOS updates that it does anyway, so would be very easy for Apple to not making these extortionate charges), whereas the costs to the banking sector plus the additional costs for the service making it financially unviable is a huge achilles heel that's bound to be getting in the way. So the answers to solving this are glaringly obvious. However, what concerns me most is the ugly side of how business works (in the sense of how companies stay afloat through business investor confidence, which applies to even the giants, and in many ways, especially the giants), that also provides yet another spanner in the works. Because, naturally, while we as consumers can all see that the bigger picture is that ApplePay becoming main stream means more iPhone sales, ApplePay itself having been designed as a revenue stream independently in its own right, and also being accountable to those business investors as part of their growth model, starts making the obvious solutions less likely. Because now what happens is they'll inevitably get scared of the investors pulling out of the ApplePay business investments, so they tend to hang on to flawed structures due to being scared of what impact that may have to the business as a whole. That being said, we also know that hanging onto the flaw that stops it being successful anyway, will result in the same problem.

So me being the ultimate optimist, I'm going to try to suggest acknowledging that as both methods will result in much the same disaster, there is yet another more obvious fix available here. First, Apple needs to publicly announce to its investors that their business model will be addressing this flaw and that the focus of returns to investment will be based on fixing the ApplePay pricing structure so that its can actually get accepted as a worldwide standard which in turn brings the revenue focus back to increased device sales, as the catalyst for their increased returns. (this announcement alone will make alot more sense to both banks and consumers, but would also make more sense to the investors themselves to see it starting to use a more viable strategy. (because lets' face it, all they really want to see is, if they put money into it, will they make any back). But making the long term strategy actually viable without the current obvious flaws, helps to alleviate the fears of all those investors who would have seen the problems coming and ultimately pulled out. So fixing this addresses both issues, and it's a win/win/win for everyone concerned.
[/QUOTE]

In longtime contactless places like the UK, contactless payment fraud is only running at about 0.007% of the purchase amount.

That fraud rate is less than 1/20th of what Apple gets in the US per transaction (0.15%). So, as far as contactless fraud goes, it's still much cheaper for banks to keep things as they are.

Where something like Apple Pay could make a huge difference in fraud, is if it was used for online purchases.
True, I hear that has already happened to some extent. Though I'm yet to have come across an online site that supports it. So who knows.
 
Austria doesn't have Apple Pay yet, it's not been announced that it's in the works even (though I really hope it is). I checked before hand if the place had an NFC terminal, the lady said it did and was brand new (which gave me hope), I paid with my watch and she practically danced a jig after discovering I didn't have a card hidden up my sleeve. Very grateful it worked as otherwise I would have been really hungry!
RESULT!!! Thanks for sharing this! If this is the case, then it's definitely worth us all trying it wherever we get the opportunity, because clearly some people are finding this to be working regardless of whether it's officially available yet in our respective countries. (and at the very minimum, in all the cases where it didn't work, it at least gets all the shops whose customers request it taking notice of the customer interest in it). Once enough shops start asking their banks why they haven't enabled it yet, it starts that discussion going at the decision-maker level, and increases our odds of it actually happening, rather than us all wishing it secretly to ourselves and nothing ever getting done.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the banks being able to negotiate a better deal if there are cost effectiveness issues. (as you just know that any kind of cost imbalance there will only ultimately filter down to us as consumers in the end), so probably safer to not provide yet another mechanism for the banks to wind up ripping us all off. (I'm not even going to get into the whole bank bail-in law issues for ones that become insolvent where the regular joes like you and me wind up having to bail them out each time they fail, as I could literally go on about that all day, and frankly I ain't go that that much time). So for now, let's just say we don't wanna end up there again, and better we let them make things cost effective so that we don't have to. But at the same time, I do wanna see the whole ApplePay thing actually become possible. So sure, they're all gonna have to keep working on it until they can come up with a way of doing it that's fair and safe for everyone, but at least keeping the discussions about it alive helps to keep it all relevant, and helps to ensure that the current flaws don't become a reason for them just throw out the baby with the bathwater, as it would be a real shame if they just gave up on the whole idea.
 
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Lost my wallet. Cancelled all the cards but now have no money and the banks aren't open until Monday.
I noticed my Barclays and Barclaycard info has been updated overnight in the Wallet App with what I assume are my new details (haven't received the cards yet, no input from me).
Is Apple Pay likely to work already? This could really save my a*** and stop me cancelling a few plans. The lady on the phone at Barclays customer service seems confident but I don't want to go and do some shopping only for it not to work.
 
Lost my wallet. Cancelled all the cards but now have no money and the banks aren't open until Monday.
I noticed my Barclays and Barclaycard info has been updated overnight in the Wallet App with what I assume are my new details (haven't received the cards yet, no input from me).
Is Apple Pay likely to work already? This could really save my a*** and stop me cancelling a few plans. The lady on the phone at Barclays customer service seems confident but I don't want to go and do some shopping only for it not to work.

Hi

I'd just pop out to local Tesco Express, One Stop etc and buy a bottle of pop and go for it - with no queue.
They'd hardly call the coppers.
Is it apple watch or iPhone?
I have forgotten my wallet and iPhone and watch saved me on a couple of occasions. Just starting to totally rely on apple pay on watch.

Cheers
 
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Hi

I'd just pop out to local Tesco Express, One Stop etc and buy a bottle of pop and go for it - with no queue.
They'd hardly call the coppers.
Is it apple watch or iPhone?
I have forgotten my wallet and iPhone and watch saved me on a couple of occasions. Just starting to totally rely on apple pay on watch.

Cheers

Tried it on the Tube first. It works, surprisingly. They should advertise this feature. I'd guess most people don't know about it.
 
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