apple pay

Recently, a new form of payment has been introduced to the world: Apple Pay. This is a “digital wallet” which allows people to make purchases with a single touch on their mobile devices. Although this form of payment has been around, such as the Google Wallet, Apple Pay has already dominated the mobile payments market in only one week. What makes Apple Pay so special and why has it already become the most popular mobile payments platform?

There are numerous locations that provide NFC (Near Field Communication) payments, and Apple Pay seems to be the easiest to utilize. Unlike other methods, Apple Pay requires consumers to only hold their finger on the mobile’s fingerprint scanner called the Touch ID. There will be no more of reaching into your wallet and trying to find a piece of plastic. Comparing to the Google Wallet, individuals are required to take a few more steps to complete the transaction such as entering their pin number. Apple Pay seems to be more convenient where it outperforms its competitors.

More to Apple Pay’s popularity is their secured system. According to NBC News, “The tokenization system built into Apple Pay is considered one of the most secure, fraud-proof ways to make payments, because it keeps consumers’ actual credit card data from ever entering a retailer’s point-of-sale system”. Furthermore, Apple Pay requires biometric verification to continue with the transaction. Security is an important aspect that grabs consumer’s attention. Since the hacking incident on CurrentC, one of Apple Pay’s competitors, people are starting to be very cautious on using the NFC payment method. Apple Pay is known to include a secured server that may even be safer than using credit cards. These key features of Apple Pay have brought its service on top within one week of their release.

As appealing as Apple Pay sounds, other NFC payment platforms provide more features that do not exist in Apple Pay. For example, Google Wallet is able to accept any type of major credit and debit cards. Apple Pay does not accept discover which limits their target market. Also, Google Wallet is also available in both iOS and Android devices. Using Google Wallet, individuals are able to send and accept money from others. With other digital wallets capable of much more features, Apple Pay still beats its competitors. Its feature of being highly convenient and secured has boosted up their amount of users. You now can understand how quality improves profitability.

Fulfilling customer expectations with the services Apple provides can gain additional sales. Apple Pay has also boosted up iPhone 6 sales, as it is only compatible with that type of device. Not only has its features bring in more users, but help generate more sales in the market. It’s clever to see how Apple Pay is also used as a marketing strategy. The creation of Apple Pay may be the beginning to a generation of solely mobile payments.

Do you believe that Apple Pay will remain on top of its competitors? How much longer?
As an Apple user, I may come out biased on over-crediting Apple Pay. Do you believe their service is superior to others?

Sources:

http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/gadgets/can-apple-win-mobile-wallet-war-n240011

http://bgr.com/2014/10/28/apple-pay-vs-nfc-competition/

Cash, credit card or apple pay, are you ready to ditch your wallet?

When CEO Tim Cook announced Apple’s digital wallet method in early September he didn’t go into great detail about the security aspects of Apple Pay. Although a lot of people may be hesitate on using Apple Pay it turns out Apple Pay is safer to use than ordinary credit cards.

This is how it works, it lets you use and store your credit cards just by scanning your phone. The technology that sends the payment from your phone to the register is called NFC (near field communication) it’s basically an antenna inside your phone that delivers short encrypted radio waves with your payment data. NFC has been around for a while it has been used in Google Wallet, PayPal, and Pay Express.

It’s a lot harder to steal data from NFC because your phone doesn’t give up your credit card number; instead it uses a one-time use code that gets approved by the bank for every transaction. Even if hackers managed to hack their way into a store and grab this payment data its useless to them because a code can only be used once, plus even if someone where to steal your phone you can actually wipe all the credit cards remotely.

Unfortunately not all stores that once accepted mobile payments options are accepting Apple Pay. Stores like CVS and Rite Aid have stopped accepting Apple Pay for two reasons.

The first being is that they developed their own payment method called CurrentC, it’s designed to one day let you pay at the register without using your credit card. Wal-Mart led the effort to CurrentC along with Target, Bed Bath& Beyond, Dunkin Donuts, Gap, Sears, Shell, Wendy’s and many more have joined it. It’s really no surprise that none of these stores are accepting Apple Pay.
These stores feel that Apple Pay is giving more power to credit card companies. Every time you swipe your card, retailers have to pay the credit card companies between 1.3 to 3 percent of every transaction. Apple Pay relies on credit card networks so if Apple Pay grows, it would allow Visa and MasterCard to get stronger and the fees would stick around.

Questions:

Do you think people will find it difficult to put trust in Apple, after the continuous iCloud hacks that have been going on with celebrities?
Why do you think retailers are so afraid of Apple Pay?
Do you think it’s okay for stores like CVS and Rite Aid to deny the use of Apple Pay even though these companies can handle the tap to pay technology?

http://blogs.wsj.com/totalreturn/2014/11/04/why-some-merchants-say-no-to-apple-pay/

http://money.cnn.com/2014/10/27/technology/security/apple-pay-cvs-rite-aid/index.html?iid=SF_T_River

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