Apple Pay, the new mobile payments system that unshackles iPhone users their wallets – will only be available in the U.S. when it launches next month, but Apple’s is already hiring a team to expand its mobile payments into Europe.
Mary Carol Harris has been poached away from Visa by Apple where she was the director of mobile at Visa Europe since 2008, and she’s also got some expertise with NFC too.
Apple Pay is threatening to put mobile payments companies like Square and PayPal out of business when it launches next month, but according to Square co-founder Jack Dorsey, Apple Pay isn’t actually a threat to his company.
Dorsey revealed yesterday that Square is hoping to use Apple Pay to its advantage by building a new register for sellers that accepts Apple Pay and pretty much every other form of payment you can slide across a counter.
My first impression? My goodness, this is the small one?
The iPhone 6 is a big step up. It makes older iPhones look small. Ridiculously small. Even after a few days, my old iPhone 5s feels positively Lilliputian. The 6 dwarfs the 5s, which felt big and expansive at the time. Now it looks like a little dolls’ phone.
I’ve been really digging the 6. It’s a big bright slab of glass and metal. It feels impossibly thin, almost like an oversize credit card in your hand. But it’s solid and stiff — it’s not going to snap in my back pocket if I sit on it.
The 6 is not a gob-smacker like the 6 Plus, which stops people in the street. But it’s more manageable, especially with one hand.
I’m a big fan. I like it a lot, except for one design flaw that’s been driving me crazy.
Apple’s insistence on secretive behavior is well known. When it came to entering mobile payments with Apple Pay, that veil of secrecy didn’t drop for a second — with Apple insisting on some pretty stringent security measures, despite dealing with some of the giants of finance.
The code-name it chose for one of its partners on the project might strike you as a bit familiar, however — since it was later re-used as the name for Apple’s latest iteration of OS X.
“Our first code-name was Yosemite,” Barry McCarthy, president of Financial Services at FirstData, told me in an interview. “Later on when we found out that was also the name Apple had selected for its new OS, we changed it to Project Acadia, after another U.S. national park. We weren’t allowed to use or even say the name of the technology company we were working with — which was of course Apple.”
PayPal is feeling threatened. After Apple announced its new mobile payment platform Apple Pay last week, PayPal took out a full-page ad in The New York Times, blasting Apple’s security record in the wake of the celebrity nude scandal.
For every dollar spent on the iOS App Store, Apple makes thirty cents, but if you expect Cupertino to be collecting 30% of every buck spent on Apple Pay, you’re crazy. The world of finance is much more nuanced — and ruthlessly competitive — than selling apps: Apple will have to settle for just fifteen cents for every $100 spent. But that’s actually a lot of money in financial terms.
Apple finally added NFC to the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, but if you were hoping that the company’s new NFC chip will allow you to pair speakers or integrate NFC tags into your favorite apps, you’ll have to keep waiting. Apple has put its NFC chip on lockdown, at least for now.
Sources at Apple have confirmed to Cult of Mac that the NFC chip on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus will only be used for Apple Pay when it launches this week.
Apple put mobile wallet payment platforms like Google Wallet, Square and PayPal on notice this week with the reveal of Pay, but before Cupertino decided to launch its answer to the wallet, sources tell TechCrunch the company was eyeing an acquisition of Square.
Square’s simplistic payments platform seems like it would have been the perfect fit for Apple and would have added “Next Steve Jobs Nominee” Jack Dorsey to its loaded executive ranks, but after Apple executives failed to put enough cash on the table, Square walked away from negotiations.
When Apple Pay was unveiled Tuesday, Eddy Cue was quick to mention that 83% of US card issuers are already on board. 220,000 stores will also support the mobile payment initiative at launch, including big chains like McDonalds, Walgreens, Staples, and of course, Disney.
But that doesn’t mean Apple Pay’s adoption will be smooth sailing going forward. There are still plenty of merchants that haven’t signed on, and some of the biggest names, including Walmart and Best Buy, don’t plan on supporting Apple Pay any time soon.
Apple goes to some pretty crazy lengths to ensure secrecy for its various projects, and it expects a similar commitment from its partners.
According to a New York Times article, prior to releasing Apple Pay, the key players (which included Apple and banks such as JP Morgan Chase) referred to each other by code-names after rumors of Apple’s interest in mobile payments surfaced in early 2013.
From books to phones, Apple’s named everything with the same “i” moniker since 1998. With the Apple Watch and Apple Pay, however, it looks like that convention is set to change.
Cult of Mac reached out to Ken Segall — the former Apple employee who started the tradition with the original iMac — for his surprising reaction to Apple ditching his naming convention for new product categories.
Decision time: Which iPhone 6 is right for you? We’ll walk you though the features of both new iPhones to help you make that very decision in time for the Sept. 12th pre-order. Plus, will Apple Pay be replacing our wallets? We’ll tell you our thoughts and musings. And of course, the Apple Watch—we’ll review its features and reveal our initial impressions. And finally… he did it… Tim Cook brought back the One. More. Thing. Some of us are thrilled. Some of us aren’t. Hit play for all that and more.
Titter your way through each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the chuckles begin.
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More and more retailers are already using NFC terminals, but there is an additional reason why those without them might want to hurry up and get onboard: because Apple Pay could lead to more impulse purchases.
That at least seems to be the rationale of Walt Disney World, according to a new report.
A partnership with Walt Disney World was announced on Tuesday, and as per About.com theme park expert Arthur Levine, Disney is convinced it’s going to prove a great way of upping the amount customers will spend.
“It is surely hoping that by giving visitors the ability to use its cash-less system anywhere across the Disney World campus, they will increase spending, especially on impulse purchases,” Levine says.
For the second consecutive year, Apple has delivered not one but two new iPhones. Unlike the iPhone 5c, however, the slightly cheaper model this time around isn’t just an old iPhone inside a new shell. The iPhone 6 has the same A8 processor, the same Touch ID fingerprint scanner, and the same improved iSight camera as the iPhone 6 Plus.
So, is size the only difference, and how do you choose which model is right for you? Our in-depth comparison below will help you compare each device — spec for spec, feature for feature — and decide which one most deserves a place in your pocket for the next 12 months.
Apple might be a hardware first company which creates software only to drive sales of its physical devices, but that doesn’t mean it can’t earn a bit of money from its services, right?
According to a new Bloomberg report, Apple will earn a fee every time its newly-announced Apple Pay service is used to make a purchase.
The deals were reportedly brokered by Apple with each bank individually and will give Apple a sizeable share of the $40 billion generated by banks each year from so-called swipe fees for credit card payments. JPMorgan, Bank of America and Citigroup have not yet disclosed the terms of the deal.
That like-new iPhone 5s in your pocket? Obsolete. How about that smartwatch or fitness band you’ve been carting around on your wrist for the past six months? Old news. If you whip out your leather wallet and try to pay with a rectangle of plastic — at least at the corporate stores Apple works with — chances are you’ll be looked at like an old fogey.
Apple has, once again, thoroughly owned the mobile category, expanding the ways we communicate, live and transact business in our daily lives.
This domination of the smartphone, smartwatch and mobile payment categories, as revealed in today’s big iPhone 6 and Apple Watch event, has us ready to hand over another load of cash to the Apple mothership, and gladly. As usual, there were some surprises — some awesome and some not so much — but here are the main takeaways.
The new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus have bigger screens, badder cameras and you can use them in place of your wallet.
Apple just took the wraps off Apple Pay, its much-rumored mobile payments service. CEO Tim Cook is so excited about it that he looped the demo over and over during the keynote. It’s being touted as an “easy, secure and private” way to get your caffe latte on the run.
One thing’s for sure: this is a massive shift in the payments industry.
