Comment by aggie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aggie | Hacker News Reader

Apple Pay is great, but I wish it was more universally accepted at point of sale. But in the US we're not even at consistency in any form of POS payment method.

Disney World (Florida) notably spent a BILLION dollars implementing a wonderful contactless payments++ system called MagicBand. [1]

Last week I was shocked that at Disneyland (California), where they haven't implemented MagicBand, they not only don't accept Apple Pay or other contactless payments, they weren't even consistent about chip vs. mag swipe!

During one transaction, after unsuccessfully swiping, the teller told me to insert the chip in a tone like I've been living under a rock. I had defaulted to swipe after the previous 3 transactions had been. There was no post-it note like many businesses resort to.

If even Disney can't get this right in their highly-curated-experience theme park, I'm not holding my breath for universal adoption anytime soon.

[1] https://www.wired.com/2015/03/disney-magicband/

The number of integrations between MagicBand and the existing &/or legacy systems must be staggering.

At the very least, there is the integration between the MagicBand and FREEDOM-POS, the point of sale software running at Disney parks.

It could be as simple as the band functioning as a reference to the built-in EFT account called 'play money', which is a stored value account generated on a POS and assigned to a given serial number (say, a disposable wristband, season pass card number, MagicBand number) and either filled with cash to store and deplete, or linked to a credit card to charge indirectly.

It could be as complex as the MagicBand bypassing FREEDOM entirely and interfacing directly with a back-end server that knows the card details, merely racking up charges over time to be periodically charged directly to the customer's card.

Either way, I'd love to get a peek behind the curtain at the Disney IT operations, warts and oddities specifically.

Technology wise, Magic Bands are awesome.

You can pay with them in the parks (no fishing around for cash or your credit card), it links to your Disney accounts, you can use them as a ticket to get into the parks and it functions as your door key at Disney hotels and cruise ships.

And it all just works.

The amount of data they collect from this must be staggering.

One thing I discovered: You can't assign a magic band to open multiple hotel rooms.

(I was bringing a large family to the park, and wanted folks to be able to float between rooms.)

We ended up falling back to card keys.

Sounds like a bit of an outlier situation. However, it also would seem to have a fairly simple technical solution.

It’s insane. There’s long range detectors all over the parks that can pick up the general amount of people in that area of the park for analytics purposes. For example, in the Star Wars area of the park, your MagicBand is detected behind the scenes and your performance on the Millennium Falcon is saved, and cast members can comment on it at point-of-sale terminals (“Hey! I heard you crashed the Falcon!”).

Here’s some of the FCC filings: https://fccid.io/Q3E#axzz3XOMIw4yj

MagicBands are awesome. Took the family to Disney last year and it made everything a breeze. Photos, food plans, park/hotel/room access. Everything. All professional photos from the photographers walking around were just in our account when we logged in and could download whatever we wanted. FastPasses were linked as well from whatever we selected on our mobile phones. Best billion dollars they ever spent. Hands down made the trip for my wife and I orders of magnitude simpler. If you really wanted, you could literally not carry a single thing except for your phone and the band around there.

I agree it is a nice perk. But I can't say it is anywhere close to "orders of magnitude" better. It was nice to not have to dig out a credit card for each purchase. But that is pretty minimal friction. And possibly welcome friction for those not on an unlimited budget.

> Apple Pay is great, but I wish it was more universally accepted at point of sale. But in the US we're not even at consistency in any form of POS payment method.

That's something Samsung got right with their execution. It also emulates a mag stripe so it works in way more places in the US (its always fun when casher tells you you don't accept contactless payments and they see it work)

But 5 years after Samsung introduced MST, Apple Pay is closing in on 10%.

In Finland pretty much all places support NFC cards and by extension Apple Pay. Yet to come across a place where it didn't work.

Same in Denmark. If you don't support contactless payments that basically means you're not in business.

That said, people mostly use cards; potentially because the bank apps that existed before were just really awful and didn't work the majority of the time. But Google Pay and Fitbit Pay work great.

I think Europe got rid of magstripes 15 years ago. IIRC 2005 was the deadline.

Almost, there was still a few places using them. The introduction of PSD2 and Strong Customer Authentication in September 2019 means that banks aren’t allowed to accept magstripe transactions anywhere in the EEA.

My last magstripe transaction in Finland was in 2010 at a local supermarket that upgraded late.

I've never paid with a magstripe in Finland. I only remember having some kind of a loyalty program card that required a swipe.

I'm on the tail end of backpacking around Europe. This isn't just Finland, it's the entirety of Europe + UK. I was the only one with a chip, explaining to everyone that the US largely doesn't have touch to pay cards.

What countries have you been to? Germany is quite infamous for having many places that still only accept cash. And when I was in France half a year ago, many places had card readers that wouldn't accept contactless payments.

By the way, the UK is still in Europe, even if they have left the EU :)

Try renting a car with sixt. They dont support apple pay nor nfc/contactless payment. It's the only company (besides my local coffeeshop, cant blame them whehe) I found in The Netherlands that is behind.

Same in Canada, I'd estimate 80%+ of places I go to support NFC payment - though I live in a major city so it might be less in more rural areas.

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