January Apple Pay roundup
The New York Times | Dozens More Companies Sign Up for Apple Pay (16 December 2014)
Wired | Apple Pay Recruits Dozens of New Banks and Stores (16 December 2014)
ITG INVESTMENT RESEARCH REPORT FINDS STRONG APPLE PAY MOMENTUM (19 December 2014)
CBS MarketWatch | Apple Pay poised to take off in 2015, report predicts (9 January 2015)
CBS MarketWatch | Inroads made by Apple Pay propel 'mobile wallet' idea (26 January 2015)
AppleInsider | Tim Cook calls 2015 the 'year of Apple Pay' as service takes over contactless payments market (27 January 2015)
Anecdote time
Last month my family bought three new iPhones:
An iPhone 6 for my wife (replacing her 3-year-old iPhone 4S)
An iPhone 6 for my son (he saved up and paid for it himself, including his portion of the family service plan)
A fully loaded (128 GB) iPhone 6 Plus for me (my first iPhone!)
My wife's old iPhone 4S went to my daughter, minus access to the family data plan
My old iPod touch 5 went to another son, joining the junk flip phone he already had
The Competitive Landscape
I bring up the preceding because I almost immediately started using Apple Pay on my new phone, and my wife is starting to get in on the fun ... it's pretty darned easy to use this at most of the places that support it, and its security and one-touch ease of use make it no wonder that Apple Pay has already taken over 2/3 of the mobile payments market.
The competition for Apple Pay looks particularly anemic, with Wal-Mart/Best Buy/CVS/Rite Aid's clunky CurrentC system still in test (it looks even more anemic to me since I don't shop at any of those chains, but that's just me), Google reportedly in talks to buy up a competitor to keep its Google Wallet offering nominally viable just 6 months after Apple Pay debuted despite Google having a two-year head start. Amazon threw in the towel just last week. And while PayPal appears to have a role going forward, does Microsoft even have a bid? Maybe some of these (plus others like Venmo and Square Cash) efforts can consolidate further. But when the Apple Watch ships it'll make Apple's integrated ecosystem that much harder to overcome.
Some observations using Apple Pay
A small drugstore chain in the Puget Sound area, Bartell Drugs, accepts Apple Pay but requires a signature, unlike vendors which fully support Apple Pay. Maybe this is how some of the other places that started out supporting Apple Pay did it before pulling their support a few days later in favor of waiting for CurrentC?
A sporting goods store where I tried it, Sports Authority, appeared to accept Apple Pay on my phone, but did not in reality. The clerk was quick to tell me as I whipped my phone out to pay for something that their store did not support Apple Pay even as my phone appeared to be accepting my thumbprint, and that clerk was correct, as no payment was made even though my phone appeared to be sending one. Maybe this is how those Wal-Mart-type stores turned their support off.
My credit union, which was not among the initial financial institutions supporting Apple Pay, has described itself in its monthly newsletter as adopting a "fast follower" approach to implementing Apple Pay, and says support is "coming very soon". I will drop one of my bank-issued credit cards when that happens and get a new one from my credit union. This follows up my action a few years ago to move accounts from big irresponsible "too big to fail" banks to small responsive credit unions wherever possible. |
