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Rite Aid Disables Apple Pay Support After Initially Accepting Payments
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I agree with this an extent, but I also feel not using the available tech, is just as lazy.
Apple Pay is more about safety and security, then speed and ease, all though speed, ease, safe and secure, that's a win!
I guess I'm lazy, but I'll have more time being lazy now.
There isn't actually anything that needs to be "socialised, absorbed and understood".
When you shop and make a payment, you hand over cash, or a debit or credit card, or you use an NFC terminal. The cashier needs to be trained to handle cash, to handle the debit or credit card, or to handle the case that the NFC terminal says "yes, a payment has been made".
With Apple Pay, the customer has to figure out how it works (fortunately it's not difficult), then the NFC terminal says "yes, a payment has been made". Just what it did when you held an NFC-enabled credit card against the terminal. It works without the cashier even knowing that Apple Pay is involved.
My guess is Rite Aid:
1. Is miffed they were not provided the opportunity to be included in the roll out.
2. They want the lower "card present" interchange fees for NFC transactions. It wasn't an issue prior to ApplePay, but it's a different ballgame.
1. Is miffed they were not provided the opportunity to be included in the roll out.
2. They want the lower "card present" interchange fees for NFC transactions. It wasn't an issue prior to ApplePay, but it's a different ballgame.
Wider acceptance can only come with use and millions more iPhone 6 sales. A store with a financial incentive to block the system will not accept it until they have no choice: when it costs them too much to ignore it.
Everything you describe (that the store doesn't know who I am and what I purchased) is of course exactly what Apple's customers and Rite Aid's customers want.
I would agree, except that a general awareness of what Apple Pay is and what it does would need to be addressed at the retailers.
The examples of cashiers not knowing if they accept Apple Pay or what it is would suggest that hasn't happened everywhere. Perhaps more time to train staff would have helped that, perhaps it's just inevitable.
No, it's more like:
Honey, this store is deliberately making things difficult for us. Let's shop elsewhere.
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I won't avoid them if they simply don't accept it, necessarily. I WILL avoid them if they're technically capable of accepting it and purposely disabled it. That's a place I don't want getting my money no matter how badly I need a bottle of water.
Suddenly I'm glad I shop at CVS instead of Rite Aid. They're the only store I regularly go to that has NFC-equipped terminals, and last night I had absolutely no problem using my iPhone to pay for some Halloween candy. Was so quick I didn't even have time to read the prompts.
But, hey Rite Aid, if you don't want my money, that's cool. I'll take my business somewhere that does. Given the shoddy state of PoS security, broad ApplePay support can't come fast enough. I've already had my CC replaced once this year due to Target's stupidity, and I'm not even a regular customer there.
But, hey Rite Aid, if you don't want my money, that's cool. I'll take my business somewhere that does. Given the shoddy state of PoS security, broad ApplePay support can't come fast enough. I've already had my CC replaced once this year due to Target's stupidity, and I'm not even a regular customer there.
Pretty sure my local Staples is disabling their NFC readers; their PoS terminals sure look like they have the NFC "patch" on top, but there's a sticker over it and no "touchless" logo. I also asked, to make sure, and they said no non-contact payments. (It's also possible, of course, that the plastic oval is just decorative and happens to look similar.)
That's my philosophy, too. If you're a local grocery store and haven't upgraded/cant afford to upgrade your PoS terminals with NFC yet, I'm not going to blame you. I try to pay cash at those locations to give them an extra couple percent margin, anyway.
But if you're a national chain that already has the capability to accept more secure payments, in the form I would prefer, and have made the active decision not to, then I'm making the active decision to not buy anything from you in response. Why should I, since you have indirectly told me that my security and convenience are less important than whatever deal you've worked out with a rival of my preferred payment processor?
It would be similar if I were going to make a large purchase from somewhere that for some inexplicable reason only accepted, say, MasterCards issued by Chase, while I carry around a MasterCard from BofA. I'm almost certainly not going to go to the trouble of making an ATM withdrawal, or getting a different credit card, just so I can buy something there. More hassle than it's worth, and my business obviously isn't valuable enough to them to make a trivial change in their payment processing.
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I'm going to need something more definitive than that. There are tons of restaurants, bars, and small businesses that ONLY accept cash OR how about airlines that ONLY accept CCs, no cash, for on-board purchases. Lots of businesses DON'T accept certain CCs. How about places that don't accept personal cheques or places that won't accept $50 or $100 bills.
Really, why all these competing systems? NFC payments should be simple.
Associate your credit cards with your account (any and all credit cards that a store accepts should work)
Tap to pay
Select which card you want to pay with
This system should simply treat the phone as a credit card. What should happen is the phone should generate a unique Visa, Mastercard, etc. number each time the tap to pay feature is used and send that number.
As far as the merchant is concerned, it's just another credit card transaction, as far as the user is concerned, they would be able to choose what card to pay with.
With this simple setup, there is no need to negotiate with banks or stores, it would just work.
This system would be just a secure, as the unique numbers are generated on the fly and would be a one time use only number and again avoids a lot of the issues we are seeing here.
Associate your credit cards with your account (any and all credit cards that a store accepts should work)
Tap to pay
Select which card you want to pay with
This system should simply treat the phone as a credit card. What should happen is the phone should generate a unique Visa, Mastercard, etc. number each time the tap to pay feature is used and send that number.
As far as the merchant is concerned, it's just another credit card transaction, as far as the user is concerned, they would be able to choose what card to pay with.
With this simple setup, there is no need to negotiate with banks or stores, it would just work.
This system would be just a secure, as the unique numbers are generated on the fly and would be a one time use only number and again avoids a lot of the issues we are seeing here.
They likely store the information in the Cloud so that all participating merchants can mine your purchase history for the purposes of selling the information or advertising. The same mechanism that allows the merchants to access the information will be the same ones the hackers will use. They are just telling the public it is safe and secure to help adoption. Contrary to Newton's and Kepler's Laws, greed is what makes the earth spin on it's axis and orbit the sun.