Apple Pay Gives Glimpse of Mainstream Appeal for Mobile Payments

Some major retailers are seeing a wave of consumers eager to check out at the register with their iPhones.

The idea of not having to rely on our wallets is quite tempting and the idea of having to ditch it has been revolving around since years. Many tech companies have had their eyes on ways to somehow eliminate the need to rely on cash or credit cards but this only remained in theory. Apple however has done something about it. Apple’s recent Apple Pay is the perfect hit at the wallet and only within the first three weeks of the service launching, a trend has been observed by retailers who claim that customers are more than enthusiastic about checking out at the counters with their iPhones.

This service is being applauded even by some major competitors including Google and Softcard who say that Apple has managed to create general awareness of mobile payments, including for their services. Whole Foods, a well known high-end grocery store, claims to have processed more than 150,000 Apple Pay transactions. Though some retailers had been holding back and were skeptical about the payment system, they have finally started to come out and McDonald’s now accepts Apple Pay at its 14,000 restaurants in the United States and 50 percent of its tap-to-pay transactions came from Apple Pay. Walgreens has also claimed that its mobile wallet payments had doubled since Apple Pay came out.

This sounds like a lot of progress but Apple Pay still needs to catch up and become a dominant payment system but the good news is that according to analysts, Apple has managed to tap onto something useful. And there is plenty of room for progress because the figures given by the retailers show that there is a lot of scope and willingness from customers to ditch the cash and cards.

Denée Carrington, an analyst with Forrester Research, said “Quite frankly, a lot of it has to do with the strength of the Apple brand and how much merchants and customers love how easy the experience is. I’m not saying it’s changing the landscape overnight. But this has never happened with other mobile wallets.”

There are however mixed opinions and we must not think that Apple Pay has managed to blow away all retailers with its early adoption. For instance, Toys ”R” Us supports Apple Pay in all of its 870 stores and it said that though the number of mobile payments at its stores increased after the introduction of Apple Pay, there were still relatively few mobile payments because customers were still learning about the new technology. But things look according to Google who says that Apple’s entrance is going to be good for all players in the market in the long run. “Apple Pay has been a huge tailwind,” said Michael Abbott, chief executive of Softcard, a mobile wallet backed by AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon.

source: nytimes