Dozens More Companies Sign Up For Apple Pay

It appears rather surprising how Apple Pay seems to be expanding now after it was initially criticized and was tagged as unsafe and unacceptable by many companies. The situation seems to have been changing gradually and the companies adding Apple Pay to their payments systems are slightly increasing in number. Apple made an announcement on Tuesday stating that in the past couple of weeks it had signed up numerous banks, retail stores and start-ups to adopt Apple Pay which is the company’s latest e-commerce product.

With the help of Apple Pay, customers will be able to buy things with little more than a wave of their iPhone. SunTrust, Barclaycard and USAA are the new additions to the list of companies which have agreed to accept Apple Pay as a payment system and ten other banks are going to back this new form of payment. Some of these include the TD Bank North America and Commerce Bank. Apple has stated that with these new additions, it supports the cards that represent about 90 percent of the credit card purchase volume in the United States.

Companies which now accept Apple Pay also include Staples, the big-box office supplies retailer which is accepting this payment method at its 1,400 United States locations, chain grocers Winn-Dixie and Albertsons have also hopped onto the bandwagon and recently the Amway Center, the home to the Orlando Magic basketball team, was also added to the list.

Companies where the Apple Pay system was being used since its launch have shown that the latest payment does have a lot of potential. For instance, Whole Foods, which accepted the payment system when it was released in October, claims to have processed more than 150,000 Apple Pay transactions within the first few days. McDonald’s says that around 50 percent of its tap-to-pay transactions had been carried out with Apple Pay. Apart from these, Disney, Lyft, Uber and Airbnb also accept Apple Pay but they haven’t revealed any official data of transactions as yet.

Patrick Moorhead, president of Moor Insights & Strategy, a research firm, said “Retailers and payment companies see Apple Pay as the implementation that has the best chance at mass consumer adoption, which has eluded prior attempts. They believe it will solve many of the problems they had before with electronic payments.”

Alex Martins, chief executive of the Orlando Magic, is of the view that with the help of Apple Pay, companies are going to enter into a new digital phase. “One of the biggest pieces of feedback we get from our fans is that the food and beverage lines are too long,” Mr. Martins said in an interview. “It keeps them from going to the concession stand because they don’t want to miss the action. This, and technologies like Apple Pay, will speed up our service.”

source: nytimes