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Comment by mattbrewsbytes | Hacker News Reader

Beyond hardware integrations between their own HW, their software/services are odd and don't interoperate with conventional things. I used iphoto or whatever it was called and it had proprietary storage which was a huge turn off for me. Its never clear if a point of sale terminal accepts Apple Pay and where to hold your device so I avoid using it since chances are I have to get out a card anyway. Their podcast app has a concept of "play next" or "play last" and I went looking for a playlist thinking that was a thing where I could re-arrange a list, couldn't find that, maybe its there somewhere? Kinda same with "saved" or "downloaded" I was able to figure these out in Spotify's app. It feels like Apple's app UI always has extra clicks involved or its like key features are buried. Maybe its me and how my brain is wired from many years of Windows? The UI's are consistently odd.

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> Its never clear if a point of sale terminal accepts Apple Pay and where to hold your device so I avoid using it since chances are I have to get out a card anyway.

This is actually kind of antithetical to your point. Apple Pay interoperates with all conventional point of sale systems. It's a PCI compliant, certified, contactless EMV payment device. You can use it anywhere you see the contactless EMV logo. There are standards actually about where that logo should be placed on the payment terminal to minimize confusion.

As for how to hold it, you're going to actually have less trouble figuring that out as compared to a passive card since passive cards have to be positioned a lot more accurately within the field - because physics.

There's a lot of examples of what you're describing but this isn't one.

> if a point of sale terminal accepts Apple Pay and where to hold your device

It's pretty obvious, it says "tap to pay" and has the logo on it?

Some of these terminals are oddly designed. Often the screen says "tap to pay," but you tap something above it that's not clearly marked, not the screen. Enough of the others have you tap the screen that you think it's that. Or a part says "Apple Pay," but that's just advertising the feature, and there's some unmarked area to tap.

But even for the ones that are decent, idk why I'd not just use my credit card.

Well, then you'll just tap it in the same place that you'd tap your credit card. ;)

I.e. less-snarkily, nothing about that complaint relates to Apple Pay, just to how contactless payments work in general, whether they're from a phone or from a card. Most cards are contactless -- even in the USA -- these days, in my experience.

Yeah, but you can also insert the card into the chip reader and not deal with the NFC stuff. Anyway, it's not an Apple-specific complaint.

This is much less confusing in Europe because all the card readers are smaller and the nfc reader is always on the screen, and the card is the same size as the screen. In the US the screens are so big and the reader spot can be on the screen, on the side, etc , never consistent

Maybe my gripe is a few years old before chip cards became prevalent here in US. You get my point, the lowest common denominator is a card so if my phone isn’t going to work for whatever reason and I have to dig out my card, I’d prefer to just dig out my card. The only time I use Apple Pay is on the phone in their app store, otherwise it’s just irrelevant.

Yeah I never use Apple Pay, it's useless

Apple Pay is different from an NFC card tap because it's authenticated. This rarely matters in the US but it can in other countries.

Yes, in theory it should be more secure, but they aren't passing that benefit onto the customer in the form of a lower fee or anything, so it's pointless to me.

Apple Pay is super useful for a US-based person while traveling internationally because Apple Pay supports CDCVM. This means that if you have a card that ordinarily requires a signature at the point of sale in the US, you can can use that card in Apple Pay, in Europe or anywhere else, without signing. If you use the physical card, you have to sign. If you try and use the physical card at an automated terminal that doesn't support CVM Signature, you can find yourself in a position where only the Apple Pay version works.

CDCVM also generally doesn't have a contactless floor limit meaning while a contactless card may have a $100-200 cap for transactions, Apple Pay usually doesn't have a cap. Even when local contactless cards may be declined! I say usually because the terminal has to have been updated over the last few years to negotiate CDCVM, which they will in time.

I would highly recommend starting with Apple Pay abroad and only if it doesn't work falling back to a physical card because you will have a far better experience.

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind next time I travel. Last time, the country didn't have Apple Pay.

You including your Apple Pay gripe in that list is a misattributed laughable Americanism instead of the jab at Apple that you intend it to be.

Why's that?

Something about the shitty metric system I'll bet

I'm guessing their point was that in many other countries (ex. Canada), tap to pay is pretty much universally supported for many years, to the point where I'm surprised when a merchant doesn't have it. The majority of my transactions in Canada were tap to pay as far back as 2018.

It's also worth noting that Apple Pay isn't its own protocol, it just does the same thing as the tap to pay built into cards, so not at all within Apple's control how much it's supported or how the terminal works.

Yep, same here in Australia. I never leave the house with more than my phone and I expect to tap & pay for absolutely everything. Even have cardless cash thru my bank's atm. and a digital license.

Visiting America feels like travelling back in time in this regard

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