If you’re frustrated by the limited number of retailers supporting Apple Pay, there’s hope from across the Atlantic. New figures reported by the Guardian show that there were more than a billion contactless payments in the UK last year, accounting for one in six of all card transactions.
I said last summer in my Apple Watch Diary series that Apple Pay arriving in the UK was the tipping point for me in transforming the Watch from a useful device into something I was reluctant to be without. That was confirmed last week when a fraud attempt left me without Apple Pay for a couple of days.
I received a text from my bank asking me to call them as they suspected my card had been compromised. I call them to find that they’d blocked an attempt to use my debit card for a £1200 ($1700) online transaction. As it was for a gadget purchase, I was impressed that they caught it – though perhaps it was the surprise at a large purchase from a non-fruity company …
Having confirmed that I didn’t make the transaction, they put a stop on my card and said they’d send a new one out within a few days. Interestingly, the UK seems to lack one Apple Pay feature the US has …
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While the number of U.S. retailers who accept Apple Pay has grown seven-fold between the launch of the service and the end of last year, usage appears to be lagging behind that curve. A survey by Phoenix Marketing found that even in the cases of retailers with the highest levels of Apple Pay usage, only a minority of customers use the payment method there more than once a month.
The survey also noted that 47% of Apple Pay users had experienced a failed transaction at least once, and that a handful of states account for half of all payments made using the service.
As someone who lives in the UK, where contactless payment first launched in 2008, none of this surprises me – and I don’t think it’s anything for Apple to worry about …
Retail data analytics firm InfoScout has told payment industry conference PYMNTS R2 that the percentage of U.S. iPhone 6 owners who have tried Apple Pay fell from 15% in March to 13.1% in June. Usage has also fallen sharply among those who have tried the service. Surveying iPhone 6 owners who have previously used Apple Pay and were shopping in a store that accepts the payment method, the percentage using Apple Pay fell from 39.3% in March to just 23% in June.
Payment industry site Pymnts suggests that while the fall is in some ways unsurprising, Apple must also accept part of the responsibility …
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When Apple announced that Apple Pay would be coming to the UK in July, there was one major bank missing from the list: Barclays. While the company tweeted that in was in “constructive talks” with Apple, it seemed odd that all other major UK banks had managed to reach agreement while it hadn’t. We may now know the reason for this.
CNET reports that Barclays is hoping to persuade its customers to use its own bPay mobile payment service instead. Rather than embedding a virtual card in an iPhone app, the company wants people to apply a sticker to the back of their phone – or carry a keyfob or wear a wristband …
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Apple has invested a lot into its Apple Pay mobile payments solution since its launch last fall. Since launching in October, the payment method is already accepted at more than 700,000 retail locations, according to the company. Reuters today has published a new report in which Apple says that Apple Pay will be accepted by half of the top 100 merchants in the United States by the end of this year, with more planned in 2016. Currently, a fourth of the top 100 retailers support Apple Pay.
According to a retailer that Reuters contacted, Apple has been pushing its mobile payment service aggressively to retailers. The retailer, which remained anonymous and has no plans to accept Apple Pay, said this:
“They have been pushing hard and it’s been that way for months. They have called and tried to persuade us even after we communicated our decision to them.”
That same retailer has no plans to accept Apple Pay because not even a “small percentage” of its customers have requested it. Nevertheless, the research found that retailers accepting Apple Pay are generally happy with the service, and its customers are too…
Update: Home Depot says it plans to accept Apple Pay in the near future.
Home Depot appears to have quietly stopped accepting Apple Pay. Although never officially named as a partner, the company has supported contactless payment and Apple Pay used to work in at least some of its stores. An Apple support document updated last week lists Home Depot as one of the stores that “might not currently be set up” to accept Apple Pay.
The change appears to be related to Home Depot’s deal to accept PayPal as a payment method both in store and online …
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Visa Europe has announced that its European contactless payment terminals will support the tokenization service used by Apple Pay by mid-April. This would allow Apple to introduce Apple Pay to Europe anytime from this point on. MasterCard has advised us that it already supports tokenisation globally.
Tokenisation technology will be at the heart of new mobile payment solutions and has been hailed as one of the best data protection and fraud prevention methods available. The new service will be available for financial institutions [in Europe] from mid-April 2015.
Although Europe has had contactless payment cards for several years, these currently transmit the actual card details to the terminal. Apple Pay, in contrast, transmits single-use codes which card companies can map back to the actual card, a functionality currently only available on the Visa network in the USA. As of mid-April, that functionality will be available in Europe too …
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Contactless credit and debit cards are only just starting to take off in the USA, but with Apple Pay driving merchants to introduce contactless payment terminals, you are increasingly likely to find that RFID symbol on your bank cards when you receive replacements.
We’ve had contactless cards in Europe for a few years now, and they’re even more convenient than Apple Pay for low-value transactions. For anything up to £30 ($46), you don’t need to verify the transaction in any way: just tap your card against the terminal. You can even do this without taking the card out of your wallet. (Bank guarantees protect you against fraudulent transactions.)
Convenient, that is, unless you have more than one contactless card in your wallet. This can either lead to the wrong card being debited or, more usually, cause the transaction to fail. Truffol has come up with an iPhone 6 wallet case specifically designed to solve this problem …
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Staples has revealed that Apple Pay is now the most popular form of payment in its iOS app, used for 30% of purchases made using the app. Apple Pay also appears to have driven new sales, with almost two-thirds of those transactions being from first-time Stapes customers, reveals FierceMobileIT.
“Apple Pay has been one of the most successful implementations when it comes to payments. […] Right now it’s the number one payment method for us in our iOS apps,” said Prat Vemana, vice president of mobile commerce for Staples.
Vemana also revealed that while Staples has both iOS and Android apps, with usage split pretty evenly between the two, Apple owners are more profitable, generating 70% of mobile purchases …
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Following in the footsteps of the Disney Stores, Walt Disney World will be accepting Apple Pay from 24th December, reports the company.
Initially, most stores, quick service restaurants, bars and ticket sales booths will be included. Any locations that use portable payment terminals, such as table service restaurants, will be added later.
To identify payment locations that accept Apple Pay and contactless payments, look for the EMVCo symbol, which is a series of curved lines, similar to a WiFi signal strength meter on many devices.
Disney was an Apple Pay launch partner, installing upgraded iBeacons and NFC readers in its retail stores prior to the launch of the service, but contactless payment had previously only been available at WDW via the company’s own MagicBands wristbands …
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Apple Pay may be more convenient than carrying around a whole bunch of different cards, and contactless payment is certainly very quick and easy, but it’s the security which is arguably the greatest benefit. Your actual card details are never stored in your phone or on an Apple server, and only a one-time code is sent to the payment terminal. Retailers never see your card details.
Just how important is this? A WSJ/NBC News poll reveals that a full 45% of Americans have been told by a retailer, bank or card company that their card details have been stolen in a data breach.
In the past year alone, major breaches have been reported at Target, J.P. Morgan Chase, Home Depot, K-Mart, SuperValu and others […]
Some 45% of Americans said they had received such a breach notification letter from a retailer or card-issuer that their payment data had been affected by a breach
Fifteen percent of those polled also said that they had been hit by online fraud or hacking.
Apple Pay is currently only available in the US, but a job listing recently revealed that Apple is working on bringing the service to Europe and beyond.
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On the same day that Apple Pay reached a sign-up rate of 90% of US bank cards by transaction volume, Samsung is reportedly planning to launch a rival mobile payment service that would work with 100% of cards and payment terminals on day one.
Re/code suggests that the company is in talks with LoopPay, a startup which describes itself as “the most accepted mobile wallet on the planet.” Instead of using an NFC chip for contactless payment, LoopPay transmits a magnetic signal which simulates the swiping of the magnetic strip on a card. That means it works with all cards and all payment terminals, contactless or not …
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After years of annual rumors that each successive iPhone would feature NFC, there was understandable skepticism when the rumor rolled around again this year for the iPhone 6. It was looking like Apple might have put all its short-range communication eggs in one basket with Bluetooth LE.
Instead, of course, the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus got NFC as the mechanism for Apple’s contactless payment service, Apple Pay. Pando suggests that the company’s timing may not be entire coincidental.
While U.S. banks have so far ignored the more secure chip-and-pin cards used in Europe, sticking doggedly to magnetic strips and signatures, all that will be changing next year. As of October 2015, banks are switching to chip-based cards – and that means merchants will need to upgrade their payment terminals.
You can still get chip-reading terminals without NFC, but it’s likely that the vast majority of stores will opt to go contactless at the same time. Which means that instead of the 220,000 places you can use contactless payment today, there will be much closer to nine million outlets by this time next year – and you’ll be able to pay with your iPhone 6 at any of them.
U.S. card issuers are already pushing Apple Pay, MasterCard running a full-page ad in today’s New York Times (via Business Insider).
Discover has tweeted that its cards will be joining Amex, Mastercard and Visa in the Apple Pay service, allowing electronic versions of its cards to be stored in Passbook for contactless payment using the iPhone 6 and Apple Watch.
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After launching its new mobile wallet service Apple Pay during yesterday’s keynote, the company gave demos afterwards, TechCrunch sharing a video.
The card you have registered with your Apple ID becomes your default card, but you can add others by using the camera on the iPhone 6 to identify it. The iPhone requests permission from your bank, and the card is then added to Passbook …
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