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Try it on an Apple Watch. Completely different experience than a phone, quite superior. Don't need to take anything out of your pocket.

I have done that too. The experience wasn't so very different because I still needed to accept the charge amount and sign. Also, if you have more than card, paying with Apple Watch is more than just double-tapping on the button. You have to select the card you want to use before you get to the terminal or you might well pay with the wrong card. That's already happened to me. The iPhone is actually easier to use in that respect since it more clearly allows you to select the card you want to use before authorizing payment.
 
Isn't there a big incentive in the U.S. for the retailers to come up with their own payment apps as the fees they have to pay Visa and MasterCard are considerably higher then in the European Union.

Except that Walmart Pay lets you use a credit card. If it was still that much of a hassle to pay the fees, why not make it bank transfer only like CurrentC?

It isn't Samsung's fault the average user is brain dead.

But then again, in other countries, contactless cards are perfectly fine for every day use.

Also, the amount of banks supporting Samsung Pay vs. Apple Pay has something to do with that.

If those users think it's not much better than swiping or even inserting, why should they bother? Also, five million users seems to be an indication that bank support isn't the biggest problem.

Weren't you the one that said chip and pin wasn't going to happen in the U.S?

You just used chip and pin in that video...

I could have been using a debit card (which, BTW, will still allow signing for purchases). Or a foreign card.

Seriously though, I have a Diners Club card, which isn't being issued anymore. So no, I wouldn't say that "chip and PIN is being adopted". Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if at some point in the future they send a replacement chip and signature card because supporting PIN became too much of a hassle.

I haven't heard about any retailers that support one without the other. Plus, why would you not support Apple Pay even if it's less volume, because iPhone users tend to be heavier spenders. When Apple Pay first launched it already worked at all the retailers that had NFC payments enabled, they didn't have to do anything special to make it work for Apple Pay.

Man, I'm really confused now.
 
mobile payment systems still trying to prove they are "more convenient" than holding your wallet up to the NFC reader

It was never about convenient for me, it is all about security. I am looking forward to one day merchant will never see/know my credit card number, security code, and my signature with AP/SP, vs when I hand them all my critical info on with credit card, specially when travel oversea, and merchant know you are from oversea.
 
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Seriously though, I have a Diners Club card

I have Diner's club too, my Discover Card.

If those users think it's not much better than swiping or even inserting, why should they bother? Also, five million users seems to be an indication that bank support isn't the biggest problem.

It is better than inserting. However, they already have essentially the same thing in RFID cards, so it's almost pointless to use Samsung Pay. If I had any contactless cards left, and if the U.S had a normal adoption of NFC readers, I wouldn't even bother with mobile payments.

Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if at some point in the future they send a replacement chip and signature card because supporting PIN became too much of a hassle

I agree, it does tick me off that banks are opting for chip and signature.
 
The worst thing about this philosophy is the end game. Every single store having their own app? It'll be annoying as hell!

Of course, the stores don't see this and are selfish and want to shut down universal systems that would solve the problem.

No, that scenario is not likely to happen. Walmart is able to do this effectively because they have over twice the number of stores in the US than their competitors like Target. Moreover, in many rural markets WalMart is the only game in town. That is some substantial leverage, and likely the only reason that Apple allowed Walmart to carry the struggling Watch after the retailer thumbed its nose at accepting Pay. Im not completely sure about my stats, but I believe Walmart might be the largest retailer in the world. Very few other merchants could begin to compete with that kind of volume to warrant supporting a unique payment system. Now, if Walmart successfully roles this out, and I believe they will, then they may be inclined to start offering it to other retailers, and then better integrated into iOS. So customers who presumably already download the app for a particular store they shop at will have the tech built into it, and have it as an option, without investing a substantial expense. It serves the same purpose as loyalty cards, and the stores can incentivize adoption and use by offering exclusive deals through it. However, those smaller store don't have anything like the power of Walmart in volume or scope, and will likely continue to offer Pay, and any other payment system that has widespread adoption. On the other hand, I'm still waiting for Starbucks to offer it.

Visa vs AmEx may be a better analogy. AmEx has a significantly smaller presence (and higher fees to merchants) but the user base of AmEx is generally more affluent and includes a lot of business travelers able to expense their purchases. Many merchants feel they need to accept AmEx as a result despite the higher fees and small base. Market research has generally found Apple users to be more affluent than Android users as well, similar forces could be at play. Add to that the fact that Apple Pay doesn't increase transaction fees to the merchant at all and I would expect almost everyone that supports Android Pay will also support Apple Pay.

Costco had an exclusive deal with AMEX which certainly drove adoption by less affluent customers. But AMEX lost touch with the changing environment, and has lost their exclusive deal with Costco at a massive cost to AMEX, who is now scrambling to replace the income losing that deal will cost them. Apple runs a similar risk. But in general yes, many smaller merchants will want to accept Pay, but that's certainly not the case with Walmart, or any of the big box retailers for that matter. Certainly Costco seems to have no incentive whatsoever to accept it.
 
I have Diner's club too, my Discover Card.

I meant https://www.dinersclubus.com/home/consumer-cards (issued by BMO Harris Bank), which is a MasterCard.

It is better than inserting. However, they already have essentially the same thing in RFID cards, so it's almost pointless to use Samsung Pay. If I had any contactless cards left, and if the U.S had a normal adoption of NFC readers, I wouldn't even bother with mobile payments.

I honestly don't think that people would care enough about it taking an extra second over tapping. It's just that retailer software is almost universally bad right now. Also, people are wildly bad at judging time--I've heard people say that it takes "a minute" or longer when it probably only took 10 seconds at most.
 
The same study says at least 20% of iPhone 6 owners have used Apple Pay at least once...that's a minimum of 40 million transactions. Not sure how you concluded that usage is "not that high".

The study is for the US. There are 100 million iPhone users in the US. Out of those, ~30% have an iPhone 6, or 30 million. 20% of that is 6 million transactions since late 2014.

That's 6 million... likely mostly low value purchases... out of well over 150 billion transactions, or about .004% (one out of every 25,000).

That said, there were estimates that during its debut week, Apple Pay accounted for 1% of transactions at Whole Foods, showing at least that many people wanted to try it out at places it was usable. One out of a hundred is still pretty low, though.

I agree that it's just a matter of time, of course. Ten or fifteen years from now, few will remember the way things are today.

--

As far as the Walmart Pay app, it was being used over 22 million times a month even before it gained its current extra capabilities. The sheer size of Walmart's customer base ensures high usage.
 
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They were foolish to try to compete with Apple. This outcome was predicted to happen right from the start.
 
Sign me up to CurrentC....Sign me up to Pay
So I can tie my bank account...and lose all my money today!!!
 
It was never about convenient for me, it is all about security. I am looking forward to one day merchant will never see/know my credit card number, security code, and my signature with AP/SP, vs when I hand them all my critical info on with credit card, specially when travel oversea, and merchant know you are from oversea.

That could be handy, especially in places where card number theft is common.

I agree, it does tick me off that banks are opting for chip and signature.

Personally, I'd hate to have to tell my wife that she's got to remember another PIN :(

Signature is easier to remember, just as quick, and treats you less like a potential card thief.
 
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I guess I should've added, "in the same visit."

But yeah that's what I thought too.
What constitutes "the same visit" to them? If you go outside and come back in is it a different visit? If you come back in 30 minutes, one hour, next day? What? Seems like a really strange anti revenue earning policy. There are many times when I have gone back up to a counter someplace and added something else.
 
I've gotten too spoiled by using my Apple Watch to pay for things. The only downside is that some places that take Apple Pay don't actually know it, so I'll pay for things and they aren't sure what to do. Other places get all excited because I'm the guy who pays with his watch! I can't imagine using CurrentC (or Walmart Pay)... might as well just get my wallet out and pay with my credit card.
 
That's just silly. Chip cards are demonstrably MUCH slower than swipe, and that's without adding a PIN. With a PIN, I would say it's on the order of 10-20x slower. I have used chip & PIN throughout Europe and seen it attempted at Target in the US, with disastrous results (in terms of wasted time). Here's the difference between Europe and USA: Europe is still a quaint little place that operates at a pace and volume an order of magnitude slower than the US. Chip and PIN is fine at a local pub in England, a quaint restaurant in old town Prague, or a drugstore in Paris. It doesn't, however, work at a US megastore like Target, which does in one hour the volume of transactions that any of those places do in a week. Chip & PIN just doesn't scale to US consumerism. At least not without a lot of pain. Europeans tolerate chip & PIN because they plan to sit and sip wine and chat for 2 hours at the restaurant after dinner - while in America, the Cheesecake Factory wants to process you and get you out the door FAST to make more revenue off that table. Same with retail store purchases. More speed = more revenue. We buy stuff as fast as they can sell it.

I have not noticed massive delays at Target. I timed a transaction for a poll on Planet Money and from the time the cashier hit "Total" until the receipt started printing it took 15 seconds for the transaction to process. I do not consider this to be a "disaster". Where the transaction takes longer is with people who are not prepared to pay and need to fumble with their card, look up their PIN on the scrap of paper in their pocket etc.
 
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Personally, I'd hate to have to tell my wife that she's got to remember another PIN :(

Signature is easier to remember, just as quick, and treats you less like a potential card thief.

PINs are a pain but signatures are of no use at all. I now do a protest doodle and of course nobody cares they just take my money. Biometric validation ultimately will make the other methods obsolete, some day. If only we could get the banks to believe that a fingerprint is much harder to forge than a signature.
 
Many people confuse the notion of tokenization ... which is primarily meant to prevent retailer data breaches from exposing real account numbers... with privacy.

Whether the retailer has access to our account names has nothing to do with Apple. It's up to the credit card schemes and banks as to whether or not to let a retailer pay to get access to a token -> account user info association.
To my knowledge there is no bank that offers this kind of lookup service. I don't see how this would even be possible since the POS terminal interacts with the payment networks, not the banks directly.
Apple itself is quite happy to let retailers mine data, as long as they partner with Apple. E.g. Apple lets Kohls register its own cards so the token and loyalty are combined.
This is entirely voluntary. If you don't add the loyalty card to Wallet, or don't set it to "automatic activation", the merchant never sees your loyalty number.
More importantly, Apple is quite happy to let banks continue to mine our purchase data, in return for which Apple gets a cut of each purchase. The banks themselves are happy about this deal as well, since now they charge retailers for setting up targeted coupons etc.
Apple doesn't do anything to facilitate data mining by the banks. It's exactly the same as if you were using the physical card. And banks have only limited ways of mining your transactions since they don't see what you actually buy (although just seeing the stores you use can of course also be revealing).
 
Personally, I'd hate to have to tell my wife that she's got to remember another PIN :(

Signature is easier to remember, just as quick, and treats you less like a potential card thief.

However, I wouldn't want to drop my card and then have someone use it at the store before I realize it's gone. Even if the banks cover fraud, it's a huge pain in the behind. Recently dumped one of my credit unions because they kept goofing around with credit and payment adjustments after I had fraud on my card.
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What constitutes "the same visit" to them? If you go outside and come back in is it a different visit? If you come back in 30 minutes, one hour, next day? What? Seems like a really strange anti revenue earning policy. There are many times when I have gone back up to a counter someplace and added something else.

I should've just went outside for a second and walked back in and said, "oh look, different visit, now take my card."
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I honestly don't think that people would care enough about it taking an extra second over tapping. It's just that retailer software is almost universally bad right now. Also, people are wildly bad at judging time--I've heard people say that it takes "a minute" or longer when it probably only took 10 seconds at most.

I know, however by the time I'm done tapping my card and the payment has gone though, I'd still be trying to stick my card in the reader. Contactless cards are even faster than Apple Pay is believe it or not.
 
To my knowledge there is no bank that offers this kind of lookup service. I don't see how this would even be possible since the POS terminal interacts with the payment networks, not the banks directly.

The banks are the ones that give out the token, so the bank would have the knowledge of who has what token.
 
We can change that:

Since it's a service that doesn't work, Apple should buy the company.
I don't know if you are being satiric or not, but you may be onto something. If at anything, to force Apple Pay at all of their vendors to really push it out so CurrentC can just die and be done already once and for all.
 
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