Apple Plans Service That Lets Users Pay With Their IPhone & IPad
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Visa, Mastercard... these are more like trade associations for the banks. They are effectively owned and operated by the banks, and the only reason Mastercard exists is to ensure Visa do not have a monopoly and vice versa.
Discovery, Amex... these have their place, but they are members clubs, which is to say that they have little to no penetration within the marketspace that is banking customers.
Apple are simply doing the equivalent of a PayPal using a mobile. They aren't replacing the existing payment systems, they are becoming one more intermediary in the chain. The actual billing is likely to be done by the mobile subscription service... AT&T and the like rather than Apple. All phones are getting this, not just Apple mobile devices.
This stuff also isn't new, in Japan near-field payments have existed for a long time and are taken for granted in many types of services (vending machines for example). It's just that finally this is moving westwards (eastwards if your perspective is different).
[edit]I notice the down votes, but this isn't spam or trolling it's just a different opinion. It's not even an uneducated opinion as my ex-girlfriend worked for Visa for 6 years and my current girl lived in Japan for 8 years and used near field payments there.
Downvoting just because you disagree isn't going to change the argument that Apple are inserting themselves into the payments process only superficially and that contrary to the parent post they aren't, and couldn't, move into replacing the credit card companies as the card companies are the banks.
(This is coming from someone who actually likes advertising when it's targeted)
Obviously security would be a massive thing for this - I'd see it useful for things like Starbucks, but I wouldn't really want to have it authorized for anything over say $50
Minority-report-like world, here we come... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBaiKsYUdvg
Maybe I'm missing something, but, why couldn't Square do something like this on their own already?
The NFC lets people with iphones make payments. Square's dongle lets people take payments. Square could make a new dongle that receives NFC signals and runs it thru the payment processing backend to let people take payments with their phones, the way they do for credit cards.
If Apple wants wide adoption, they will have to make payment taking an open opportunity, because there are so many different situations where people take credit cards now. So Square could plug into that, and would be competing with Apple to provide payment reception hardware and sofware to retailers-- which is the kind of competition Apple really likes, because Apple is in the platform business, rather than the "selling low volume terminals to retailers" business. So, I think Square will be able to plug into Apple's platform, just as they plug into Visa's platform now.
It suffered the same problem this one will: No added benefit over cash or credit-cards which people already have. Not to mention shops had to replace their payment-equipment and opt-in for this for little perceived extra value and there was really, really no market demand what so ever.
So as a consumer you had two choices:
1. Take up your bank-card, enter-security code and be done.
2. Or ask if you could pay with your "phone", and if you could then pick up your phone, see that it said the same as the display on the counter, enter a security code and then get your bank-card charged. If not, see step 1.
Can anyone see why this wasn't successful? Can anyone see why this would ever be successful? What does adding the phone into the mix add of value?
I'm not saying that this can't possibly work or will never happen, just that it's been tried before and the main reasons it didn't work back then haven't fundamentally changed in any significant way, except more people now have bank-cards and credit-cards further undermining whatever reason it should have to gain traction.
If this thing takes off just because it's an Apple-thing/iThing, I will be amazed by people's gullibility.
Are people really gullible, or are you bad at understanding what makes technology take off? I mean, just consider the options here; either millions of people are gullible and will jump on to anything called "iSomething" -- or, you're not that good at understanding what makes technology approachable and useful for most people.
For reference: the lower-case i in the name of the iPad is not what made it take off. It's that for the first time, someone made a well-designed purpose built tablet.
I've had both an iPod and an iPhone. I'm not scoffing at Apple's ability to deliver.
However a very real thing is some people's attitude towards Apple being some kind of tech-God which cannot do anything wrong. They will praise anything they do (since Apple is now a status-symbol and they want to promote the status of their owned Apple devices) and apologize for any shortcomings or try to hide them under the carpet. That was what my remark was aimed at.
Now back to the point. If you read the article and see what is being envisioned/promoted you will see that it's the same thing all over again: Mobile device set to replace credit/debit-cards.
And ask yourself: If you need to make a payment, regardless of shiny UI and polished product finish, what will be simplest and most practical? A tiny card + PIN code or a freaking iPad with a soft keyboard and an complex, alpha-numerical iTunes-password?
Just trying to picture the iPad-payment scenario in my mind turns into comedy-sketches about the tech-stupidity and hype running wild. Actually I'm seeing this very vividly as a SNL skit.
It will not be elegant, it will not be practical and it will not be better than what we have already. And in the end, it will charge the same credit-card you could have paid with in the first place.
Tell me again, what value can this possibly add?
It removes the "need to walk to the place where to pay" bit. I think that is the main reason why paying by phone works for paying for parking space.