In case you hadn’t noticed, Apple is pretty darn keen on making Apple Pay into the de facto mobile payments solution.
With that in mind, the company is reportedly set to announce a new Apple Pay Rewards Program at next month’s Worldwide Developers Conference, offering exclusive perks to customers who use the service, while driving people to return to participating merchants.
“They want to be as disruptive to payments as Amazon has been to retail,” said Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst for Forrester Research. “By being early they can shape the customer experience and expectations.”
Interestingly, the report of an Apple Pay Rewards Program comes just before Google’s I/O conference, at which the company is rumored to be unveiling its Android Pay rival to Apple’s service.
So far, Apple Pay has been a rousing success for Apple. Arriving with the launch of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in late 2014, it rapidly became the rare NFC payments system that actually resonated with customers.
It’s never been easier to make payments with an iPhone (or an Apple Watch), and it shows: Just three weeks after its launch, Apple Pay represented nearly 1 percent of the total number of transactions at some retailers, such as Whole Foods.
It’s one of the Apple Watch’s best features, and Apple has partnered with dozens of banks and plans to expand to new markets like China, the United Kingdom, etc., in the near future. Apple Pay is making all the right moves.
Given that some customers have yet to take advantage of the service, however, offering exclusive rewards is a great way of promoting Apple Pay further while also raising user expectations for competing NFC services.
There’s no word yet on what the exclusive perks and benefits will be for Apple Pay customers (I’d be happy with something like iTunes vouchers!), but presumably we’ll hear soon enough.
Source: The New York Times
