

Apple Pushes Deeper Into Mobile Payments - sirteno
http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702303448204579341290395762338-lMyQjAxMTA0MDIwMzEyNDMyWj

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Renaud
I'm both eager to see what they do and a bit afraid that their weight will
stifle progress in that area (if only because any competing tech will have no
chance of being allowed on that platform).

Having a secure way to pay with your phone, without divulging your credit card
number to the merchant, without the risk of having your card duplicated or
robbed, would be a massive advantage.

However, I'm a bit wary that Apple will be both too greedy and start behaving
like a bully, if not toward its customers, at least toward the merchants.

I also don't like Apple's paternalistic attitude toward controlling access to
content it deems "mature". Will they prevent me from using their payment
system for stuff they do not approve of?

Like with the App store, will merchants have to bow to the mighty Apple and be
forced to abide by its many rules -even the unwritten ones- to be allowed on
their payment system?

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smackfu
It's doesn't seem like this is physical goods in physical stores, but physical
goods in internet stores. So you could have a "Pay with iTunes Account" button
at the end of the purchase process, along with the "Pay with Paypal" button.

I'm not entirely sure I see where the profit motivation for Apple is. They
can't charge much more than the standard 2.X% that the other processors
charge. And only a few tenths of a percent of that is profit. I guess they
could force all iOS apps like the Amazon iOS app to use their payment system
and charge a higher percentage, but that would cause a lot of ill will and
would probably chase companies back to web apps.

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kinofcain
If they require you to confirm the purchase with your fingerprint they would
likely have lower levels of fraud than raw credit card numbers which would let
them undercut the other payment providers. They could make a nice profit
charging _less_ than the standard 2.X%.

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PanMan
I used their payments to buy something in the Apple store last week. It really
feels like stealing: You walk in, take the product, scan it with your phone,
and walk out. If they enable this for other merchants, it would be a huge
business.

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manuelflara
Yes, they've been using this in Spain for a while in all Apple Stores. There
are a few things that make it "not awesome". For example, an employee always
had to review my purchases (I wasn't buying anything expensive, less than
€100), and one time there was an issue with the payment and it required the
intervention of one of the employees as well. But I agree, once it's a "take
item, scan it, walk out" and it works flawlessly, it can be a game changer if
they apply it to other retail shops.

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bruceboughton
In the UK, you really can walk in, pick something up, pay on your phone and
walk out. No staff intervention necessary.

Granted, all the really high value stuff is out back so perhaps this doesn't
scale as well to other retailers.

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k-mcgrady
A nice advantage Apple has in this area is their retail stores. They can test
(and already are testing) mobile payments in their own stores before rolling
it out publicly. One problem they will face is that if it's tied to iPhone
they are severely limiting the number of people who can use it and if
merchants have to pay for any hardware for their stores they will go with the
mobile payment provider with the largest market share.

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Tycho
I think it's probably the best business opportunity facing any of the tech
giants right now.

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gustoffen
This helps explain why all bitcoin wallet apps are banned from the app store.

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Thiz
Apple Coin?

I for one welcome our new crypto overlords.

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k-mcgrady
Why do they need or would they want their on currency? I could see other
companies maybe going down that road but with Apple the goal seems to be to
make products as simple to understand as possible. Using USD (or local
currency) and charging through a credit card stored in their systems is easy
for everyone to understand.

