Fair enough, that's interesting but it seems to be more of a Stateside thing (the adoption of Apple pay, not the card fraud). Over here in the UK it isn't something I've seen advertised. However, until and unless Apple Pay is accepted in every retail and service outlet, it remains a gimmick. Maybe one day it won't be, but that day won't be coming in the next 12 months. I'll admit that if adopted across the board, it could be an interesting idea. Just not right now.
Apologies for my being dense and assuming you were in the US. Hate it when I do that.
If 20-30% of the vendors are configured to use ApplePay (and/or some other similarly secure NFC payment scheme) within short order, I'd consider that a major success. Clearly, there's no way something like this becomes ubiquitous overnight.
As it is, it appear the majority of the vendors that I frequent the most often will be supporting Apple Pay. When I go shopping, I very frequently visit Whole Foods, Target, Safeway, and Petco. A huge percentage of my regular shopping occurs within those businesses. Just today I shopped at three of those spots, and I visit each of them weekly at least. These are all large chains that have locations across the US and they're all onboard with Apple Pay. In other words, this isn't some dipping-the-toe into the pond to test the waters roll-out, this is a major push that will have pretty broad, impactful coverage almost immediately. It means there are far fewer places that can hurt me and my finances if their point-of-purchase hardware gets compromised. Very much not in gimmick territory.
Granted, it'll take some time for there to be enough iPhone 6's (and/or whatever other hardware comes along that can use this form of NFC) in the wild for a major percentage of the population to take advantage of it, but considering those of us that
are getting iPhone 6's will be able to do a sizable percentage of our shopping come October? This is a meaningful and highly useful piece of technology.
You want gimmick? How about that ridiculous offering in... I think it was the Galaxy S4... where movies pause if you look away. Holy cow, how annoying would that be? Complicated tech, to be sure, and sounds impressive if you don't think about it too much, but absolutely non-useful and something quickly relegated to the halls of gimmickry.
I'll take the newly implemented hardware, software, and financial infrastructure changes that will protect my bank accounts and make purchases more convenient, thank you.
