Square Announces Plans to Begin Accepting Apple Pay in 2015

[AllieNeko]

They will "have" to, because they'll have to buy PIN pads that face the customer for chip cards. The same chip card hardware usually has NFC, which if Starbucks is smart they'll turn on.

The chip card hardware usually consists of a chip card reader, a magnetic stripe reader, and NFC.

I'm glad you put have in quotes:

1. It's a liability shift, not a mandate. Starbucks may elect not to move to EMV.

2. Not all EMV readers have contactless.

3. Tons of merchants are choosing not to enable contactless, and some who used to have it enabled (ULTA, CVS, Rite-Aid) have disabled it.

 

[rdlink]

Ha. You think Apple needs square to make Apple Pay a success? This isn't Android wallet. Apple Pay can succeed in the real market because it is a good product. It doesn't need Appe to buy out a bunch of companies to force the issue.

Didn't ever state that Apple needed Square. Obviously they didn't need it bad enough to pay Square's price. I simply stated that I could see value in Apple obtaining Square, for the reasons I already stated.

You're correct in saying that Apple Pay is a good product. And I hope it does succeed in the marketplace. Because what's good for Apple Pay is good for me, the consumer. But they're not going to succeed simply because it's secure, private and easy. They'll succeed because of critical mass. Signing up Panera Bread, Whole Foods, Walgreen's, Macy's et al is not in and of itself going to make Apple Pay succeed.

When a million mom and pop businesses have NFC on their POS machines Apple Pay will succeed. As I stated before, owning Square, and being able to assure that EVERY card reader and POS terminal that Square puts in someone's business has NFC would have been great strategic move on Apple's part.

Without that they have to rely on others, such as their partner banks to sell NFC terminals to vendors. Not saying Apple Pay won't succeed with that model, but with Square they could have leveraged a very wide user base that is already in place by just giving away upgraded readers.

I love when people cite rumors as fact. LOL. So cute!

You're on a rumor site, you know? And in case you're not paying attention the vast majority of these rumors end up being correct.

LOL, more gibberish. Apple charges what the market will bare for Apple Pay, nobody will be paying 3%. Square gets that because they are a niche product, but they will never grow beyond that. Apple thinks big picture.

Okay, so now you've shown that you have no idea of what you speak. What Apple Pay and Square do in the payments arena are two entirely different things. Apple charges what they charge because they are sitting in a unique position of providing a means to make the payment process more secure for the banks and credit card companies. The banks and card companies are willing to pay that because it's a pittance compared to their losses on fraud, which Apple Pay pretty much eliminates. Square is a payment processing aggregator and their fees are in line with their competitors. They have over 4 million customers. Pretty big niche, if you ask me.

 

[proline]

Blah, Blah Blah.

Rather than respond point by point to a rambling block of text, let's just suffice it to say that you have no idea how small and irrelevant Square is, or how brief their future. They will be bought out soon, because they know that phones will soon be able to receive payments (Samsung will add this in a year or two as gimmick 1047), and then they will be screwed (three years later when Apple implements it done right). You speak of critical mass, and then say that Square's pathetic 4 million customers matters? That's ridiculous. As for every rumor being true, I don't see the press release where Apple bought Square? Most stuff here is made-up BS designed by analysts to manipulate stock prices. Nothing more.

 

[dontwalkhand]

I'm glad you put have in quotes:

1. It's a liability shift, not a mandate. Starbucks may elect not to move to EMV.

2. Not all EMV readers have contactless.

3. Tons of merchants are choosing not to enable contactless, and some who used to have it enabled (ULTA, CVS, Rite-Aid) have disabled it.

1. Every other chip country has had the same liability shift and it worked. Also do you really think Starbucks would want to pay for the cost of fraud? All it takes is one hack and this time Visa and MC won't pay for it if they don't have a chip reader. If Starbucks really doesn't choose to go EMV, that means they really don't care about their customers, or become like Google and think their product is so good that they don't have to care about their customers.

2. Most, if not all EMV PIN pads do. Check Verifone and Ingenico's websites.

It is however a different ball game for those standalone terminals, because usually the cheaper equipment doesn't have NFC.

3. The retailers you have mentioned are in MCX, so contactless is turned off. Also most retailers with the exception of Walmart doesn't even have the chip slot enabled yet. In fact Walmart is the only store I know of that has EMV on. Hopefully the other stoees will turn contactless on around the same time EMV is on.

With the case of some places such as Ulta, the register software is too old to have it enabled. Staples didn't just update their PIN pads to enable NFC, but rather replaced their whole register too.

Also, tons disabled? I use Apple Pay at about 80% of the stores I shop at, with recently a mom & pop grocery just added NFC readers to their existing hardware. The little NFC hats that sit on top of the Verifone MX860

Just because you can't use it at Walmart or Best Buy doesn't mean it's a dead end road. ASDA-Walmart in the UK doesn't have Contactless either, and yet the UK is doing fine with NFC enabled cards.

 

[rdlink]

Rather than respond point by point to a rambling block of text, let's just suffice it to say that you have no idea how small and irrelevant Square is, or how brief their future. They will be bought out soon, because they know that phones will soon be able to receive payments (Samsung will add this in a year or two as gimmick 1047), and then they will be screwed (three years later when Apple implements it done right). You speak of critical mass, and then say that Square's pathetic 4 million customers matters? That's ridiculous. As for every rumor being true, I don't see the press release where Apple bought Square? Most stuff here is made-up BS designed by analysts to manipulate stock prices. Nothing more.

You're hilariously clueless...

BTW: 4 million customers is only approximately 20 times more than the 220,000 outlets that Apple so loudly and proudly proclaimed were available to take NFC payments at the launch of Apple Pay...

 

[AllieNeko]

With the case of some places such as Ulta, the register software is too old to have it enabled. Staples didn't just update their PIN pads to enable NFC, but rather replaced their whole register too.

It used to work at ULTA, until they decided to disable it. The manager told me she didn't know why but that it was a corporate decision to disable it.

 

[tmiw]

It used to work at ULTA, until they decided to disable it. The manager told me she didn't know why but that it was a corporate decision to disable it.

Maybe they joined MCX?

 

[AllieNeko]

Maybe they joined MCX?

I doubt it. It's odd though. The US is very anti-contactless. Apple Pay could've launched almost anywhere else to wide acceptance, so I don't get why they chose the US first.

 

[dontwalkhand]

I doubt it. It's odd though. The US is very anti-contactless. Apple Pay could've launched almost anywhere else to wide acceptance, so I don't get why they chose the US first.

Because Apple is a US company, and even though it's facing some retailer backlash, many retailers are embracing it. They also are banking on that Chip & PIN deadline requiring retailers to upgrade anyway.

 

[tmiw]

I doubt it. It's odd though. The US is very anti-contactless. Apple Pay could've launched almost anywhere else to wide acceptance, so I don't get why they chose the US first.

It's actually fairly difficult to find a new terminal that doesn't have the necessary hardware at all these days. They could have left it on until they upgraded their equipment and then never bothered to turn it on again if they didn't think it has a future. Or they're joining some competing mobile wallet like MCX or similar.

Which brings up a question: if it was possible to disable just mobile wallets like Apple Pay and Google Wallet and allow normal contactless cards, would the MCX retailers have just done that?

 

[AllieNeko]

It's actually fairly difficult to find a new terminal that doesn't have the necessary hardware at all these days. They could have left it on until they upgraded their equipment and then never bothered to turn it on again if they didn't think it has a future. Or they're joining some competing mobile wallet like MCX or similar.

Which brings up a question: if it was possible to disable just mobile wallets like Apple Pay and Google Wallet and allow normal contactless cards, would the MCX retailers have just done that?

Who knows. I do know following tips on here I did use my contactless Amex card successfully at Michael's today, which is an MCX member. The terminal gives no hints that it is enabled.

 

[thefourthpope]

Is it possible since the square registers are normally iPads or iPhones that they could accomplish accepting Apple Pay without a NFC reader? Through some sort of Apple proprietary connection between devices similar to AirDrop?

I would think this is the eventual method, though apple will probably make us wait another upgrade cycle for some unknown reason.

Square is a wonderful service and I hope that they can get into this corner of the market soon.

 

[kdarling]

While there is a NFC chip in the new iPads, there isn't an antenna. It's thought that the NFC chip is only used for the secure enclave to allow Apple Pay.

Terminology note:

It's called the NFC Secure ELEMENT.

The secure ENCLAVE (used for TouchID) is in the CPU chip.

That's a really cool point! There's no reason the payment token couldn't be transferred by BT rather than NFC.

Note that with in-app Apple Pay, the device payment tokens are sent to an Apple Server, re-encrypted, and then sent onward to the merchant's acquirer.

Sending the tokens directly to a (Square) POS terminal over BT, would bypass this extra bit of security.

 

[dontwalkhand]

Who knows. I do know following tips on here I did use my contactless Amex card successfully at Michael's today, which is an MCX member. The terminal gives no hints that it is enabled.

This is also the case that is at my local Basha's, but they have a contact less logo along with all of the credit card logos on the DOOR.