Taking a leap into the future

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

appley pay intoApple Inc. Reveals Bigger-Screen iPhones Alongside Wearables

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.

apple pay

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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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:

  1. 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?
  2. Why do you think retailers are so afraid of Apple Pay?
  3. 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

Greenwashing

Light_bulb_with_plant

The goal of every business is to maximize profits, but when a company does this by making false environmental claims to make their refrigerators appear more energy efficient it makes us take a step back to look at the real problem. LG electronics agreed to compensate thousands of consumers after two of their fridges were found to contain an illegal device that activates an energy saving mode when it detects room conditions similar to those in a test laboratory. This device has been banned in Australia since 2007.

 

Though this fridge claims to be more environmentally efficient, in reality it will end up raising your electricity bill $250 a year. This fridge isn’t only a danger to your wallet but to your food as well, because it can shut off when it is opened causing the food in your fridge to get spoiled. This fridge is a danger to your food, wallet and the environment. This isn’t the first time that LG has been caught making false claims about their products; the third time is the charm for this company.

 

Have companies learned nothing from incidents like the Toyota debacle. When accelerator problems were brought to attention Toyota denied that their cars were faulty. Why aren’t companies like Toyota and LG held more responsible for their actions? It is more common nowadays to see dishonesty than honesty in business, instead of allowing customers who bought these fridges to return them LG gave affected customers $331 to cover for the unexpected increase in their electricity bills. I can’t seem to wrap my head around this situation; the leaders of this company never apologized to their customers.  LG could’ve done more to win over their customers.

 

Being honest has put some companies on top; take for example Home Depot, after an article called “Is Home Depot Shafting Customers” published by MSN Money. CEO Frank Blake quickly responded not only by justifying their recent strategies but also with an apology “Sorry we let you down”. After this public apology Home Depot found themselves with a 22.9% increase in earnings. Much can be learned about these ethical companies; clearly we can see that consumers respond well to companies with trustworthy leaders.

 

Do CEO’s and executives of these companies not think that people are going to find out?

 

http://www.management-issues.com/opinion/5923/does-honesty-pay/