All these "Company"Pay systems are horrible for the consumer. Sure they may give a particular consumer a particular benefit at a particular point in time, but on balance they are the Facebook of currencies.
One of PayPal's initial strategies was to maximize transactions for which both the payer and payee were PayPal customers. This decreased PayPal's operating costs and reduced fraud by a large amount. Sounds like everyone wins, right?
That's simply not what currency is. Currency is an transferable i.o.u. worth whatever the creditor says it's worth. The most pervasive currency is currently the greenback. Every additional party or layer between you and the U.S. government increases credit risk and transaction costs everytime you make a transaction outside the pay network your currency is held in.
Visa is so convenient because they try to be everywhere, because that's their business. Apple is not a payment network. Walmart is not a payment network. Walmart Pay is simple one part of Walmart's portfolio. Since it's not their core product, they will by necessity make compromises that negatively affect their Walmart Pay from time to time in order to benefit some other part of their business. Look to GE Capital for a case study of what can go wrong there.
Just as Facebook is a walled garden for communities, these pay networks are walled gardens for currencies. Some are actually really great, just as Facebook is actually a really great community site. But at the end of the day it's not your garden. With other options such as Visa or cash, I find it difficult to justify turning over yet another critical apect of my daily life to a profit driven corporation according to the limiting and onerous terms and conditions they set.
Phew. Now I can go back to watching Wes Craven's "Shocker".
Double-tap watch or iPhone button, wave device near register, done. Fast.
That vs Walmart Pay tap iPhone button, [swipe to find icon,] tap icon, wait for app, tap scan button, position camera for QR code, wait for focus & recognize, done. Too long.
I tried Walmart's Scan-and-Go app. Idea was you could scan all your stuff before reaching the register, scan one QR code, pay, and leave. Took an inordinately long time. Walmart dumped it.
Edit: actually there has been a "tap to pay" available at many places. All too often it was turned off, and mildly confusing which cards had it (I had one that did, then its replacement card didn't, so there I was waving a non-tap card at a tap reader). The whole tech fizzled.
What would implementing it in an iOS app even mean? If Walmart wants to support Apple Pay, they just need to use credit card terminals that can do NFC. Is the idea that if Walmart could implement it in their app, they could allow you to pay with some custom Walmart account instead of a credit card?
The point of companies having their own service like this, is so that the kickback to the charge company goes to them instead.
So instead of 1% of all mobile purchases going to Apple, it goes to walmart instead. With the scale of business Walmart had that can be upwards of a billion dollars a year.
Edit: actually there has been a "tap to pay" available at many places. ... I had one that did, then its replacement card didn't, so there I was waving a non-tap card at a tap reader. The whole tech fizzled.
Argh. I had the same thing happen. Just after getting used to using the tap-to-pay card, my bank replaced it with a "dumb" card and I was back to swiping it.
My AmEx card has had tap-to-pay functionality for years now. I keep it in my wallet where it is nearest the outside and can use without removing from my wallet. Easy. No buttons. No QR codes. And it's old tech. Still not seeing the obvious argument for throwing such an important piece of my public persona (personal finances and credit) into the same basket as my cell phone.
> Still not seeing the obvious argument for throwing such an important piece of my public persona (personal finances and credit) into the same basket as my cell phone.
Having it as part of your cell phone makes it much more secure (Apple Pay requires your fingerprint for it to work).
Your cell phone's data is protected by a fingerprint reader or arbitrary-length passcode, while your wallet's data is protected by the other person not having a knife.
Your wallet is protected by the other person not having a knife. Your cell phone's data is protected by the other person not being willing to use their knife to cut off one of your fingers. ;-)
Can you prove that for TouchID specifically? You have to defeat both capacitance and RF sensors, btw. And remember, it needs to be "incredibly easy" by the standards of random unhinged violent criminals stupid enough to commit two felonies in order to secure a phone which will be completely useless within the 60 seconds or so it takes the victim to sign in with his Apple ID and brick the phone. Any bank accounts present on the device would also be nearly-instantly disabled.
By the time you defeat TouchID, the device will be useless anyway. It's more than secure enough.
Tesco in the UK have Scan-as-you-Shop, which sounds similar to your Scan-and-Go, the prime difference would be that you are given a dedicated device for doing the scanning rather than requiring you phone.
I've used this regularly for the past few months and had no real issues with it.
I think this is a common misperception regarding Apple Pay - it actually does not use disposable credit card numbers. Apple Pay generates a Device Account Number (DAN) once when you add a card to your phone's wallet. Thereafter, the same DAN is reused on that device for all transactions with that card.
So it actually does not do much to defeat merchant tracking, assuming you consistently use Apple Pay where it is available.
"Apple (AAPL, Tech30) gets just 15 cents for every $100 in Apple Pay transactions, according to Gillis."[1]
In addition to the minor surcharge, there is the (opportunity) cost of Apple's hardware, the costs to vendors of supporting (yet) another platform, the consumer provides value to Apple in the form of consumer information, the consumer now has their fingerprint tied to payments, and then there is everything that goes along with the terms and conditions. Regarding the security, I'm not sure what the details are, but it seems that the attack surface is increased substantially. I'd personally prefer to have Visa, AmEx, etc reviewing and resolving fraud and other claims, seeing as how they've been doing it for decades and their bottom line depends on it, whereas Apple is relatively new to the game and Apple's bottom line does not depend on it.
Apple Pay might be awesome. Idk. But it's not "just a nice frontend for Visa, AmEx, etc., with better security".
You are very misinformed about Apple Pay, and the poster you are replying to is correct. CC networks pay the Apple Pay surcharge, not customers or vendors. To vendors, Apple Pay looks like a regular NFC transaction, except with a one-time card number, so there is no danger of the kind of hacks that happened to Target, Home Depot, and many other retailers. Apple has nothing at all to do with "reviewing and resolving fraud and other claims." The CC networks still do this.
When I buy a burrito and then look at a receipt (as I always do after buying a burrito) I do not see the visa surcharge, or any others. I see tax but that's it. At the end of the day, the consumer pays, because there is no free lunch, there are no free burritos.
I may have made an incorrect assumption regarding claims handling, though I'm not sure how that translates me to being "very misinformed".
I wasn't speaking only from the vendor perspective (idk what it looks like to them) or the Apple Pay customer's perspective (I'm not one of their customers) but I highly doubt it's worth my time to research to confirm that adding Apple Pay into the mix does not somehow increase the attack surface or how it does not somehow increase the amount of my personal information that is with Apple.
Nearly everything in your original comment is wrong. You say there's a "minor surcharge" but the cost to the vendor is the same as any other credit card. You mention the cost of supporting yet another platform, but the platform is just NFC, there's nothing special needed to support Apple Pay specifically. You say the consumer has their fingerprint tied to payments, but the fingerprint data never leaves the device. You say the attack surface is increased substantially, but Apple Pay is much more secure than using a credit card directly. (Not that consumers need to care, since fraud protection is 100%.) You imply that credit card companies aren't involved in resolving fraudulent Apple Pay transactions, but they are. You close by saying that Apple Pay isn't just a nice frontend for the card companies with better security, but that's precisely what it is.
I personally think this can rightly be described as "very misinformed."
>> there's nothing special needed to support Apple Pay specifically.
Yes, there is. NFC enabled terminals may be the norm at major chain stores but they do not have widespread adoption in smaller retail outlets.
The merchant pays for those terminals and they are not inexpensive. Sometimes $1000 or more. That tradeoff (making it slightly easier for you to pay) just isn't worth it to most merchants right now. As EMV adoption grows and merchants have to update their terminals to support that as well, NFC will grow.
Also, it may seem as if ApplePay is more secure for the banks as it prevents issues with data breaches but to date, it has not prevented any, will continue to only lessen the impact and is absolutely wrought with card fraud as there isn't any validation that you own the card you are loading into ApplePay. Once it's loaded it isn't checked by the merchant (if the merchant even pays attention these days) and is implicitly trusted by the network.
The key word there is "specifically." Apple Pay may require technology that isn't 100% deployed, but it is a generic and standardized technology that long predates Apple Pay, not some new Apple-only technology that the boys in Cupertino came up with and foisted on the world.
I don't understand your security point at all. It hasn't prevented any breaches? How do you know? It doesn't validate cards you enter into Apple Pay? If you possess the card (or can make one from having possession of the card data) then you can already use it fraudulently, loading it into an iPhone is just an extra unnecessary step for the thief. The security advantage is that malicious terminals can't steal card data, and stealing your method of payment doesn't confer the ability to pay. It's not perfect by any means (and again, not something us consumers need to even care about), merely better than a regular plastic card.
It took the UK a few years since contactless cards were launched around 2010. Everyone already had chip+pin terminals, and at first it was mostly coffee shops in London, but now many merchants have upgraded to contactless ones. It's not just national chains, but local shops too. It's much faster paying by contactless in a busy pub than paying cash.
It's possible there's pressure/support from Visa and MasterCard for small, local retailers to accept contactless payments. It's part of their advertising that you can buy a newspaper using the system, and most newsagents are local, independent shops.
A basic chip+pin (not contactless) terminal is available for £100 (or £3/month), I can't find a price for a contactless one.
> the consumer now has their fingerprint tied to payments
FUD. This is not how Touch ID works. Fingerprint data, which is not a fingerprint image to begin with, more of a hash, is stored on the iPhone's A_ chip itself. It cannot leave the device, ever.
Other posters have addressed the remainder of your incorrect claims.
I was not under the impression that Apple Pay users have an imprint of their finger print next to the transaction information and time and date stamp somewhere. That would be ridiculous. If the user validates a transaction using their fingerprint, somewhere it probably say something along the lines of "verified with user's fingerprint, which is not stored here." This creates what we call, linkages. It's not all in one place. That would, again, be ridiculous. But, the more linkages you have the better picture you can draw.
> That's simply not what currency is. Currency is an transferable i.o.u. worth whatever the creditor says it's worth. The most pervasive currency is currently the greenback. Every additional party or layer between you and the U.S. government increases credit risk and transaction costs everytime you make a transaction outside the pay network your currency is held in.
The root problem with traditional currency is all the trust required to make it work. -- Not that justified trust is a bad thing, but trust makes systems brittle, opaque, and costly to operate. Trust failures result in systemic collapses, trust curation creates inequality and monopoly lock-in, and naturally arising trust choke-points can be abused to deny access to due process. Through the use of cryptographic proof and decentralized networks there is a way to minimize and replace these trust costs.
(Just something that's been floating around in my head lately... Carry on.)
The cryptographic proof strictly verifies whether or not the currency is authentic or counterfeit. There is no implicit value in the proof. In fact, there is a cost to calculating the proof.
The value is in the willingness of the person holding the i.o.u. to honor that i.o.u.
A "perfect" cryptocurrency provides two of the three requirements of currency (a means of transferring value, and a unit of measurement of that value) but it does not (as no tangible or conceptual thing ever will) provide intrinsic value for the exchange. Value is subjective. Gold is useful today, not so much tomorrow. Gunpowder is useful to you, but not so much to me. Given that it has been debunked that currency arose out of trade and barter (i.e. currency with intrinsic value has replaced items with trade specific value so as to be more fungible), well, where is the value then?
Trust is the value. You trust you can, once your currency is verified, exchange it for something you value from someone. If that person does not trust that the currency you are offering will be able to be tendered elsewhere,,, then no exchange, because the currency is of no value to them.
What if everyone stops using U.S. dollar bills tomorrow? Does my bank account morph into some other value that I can use? Is it tied up in some vault of gold at the US Treasury? No. It becomes a worthless number on a register somewhere. But, the bartender at my local watering hole might vouch for me that I had that much or that I made that much money or that my credit was good. Trust = Credit
Without trust there is only trade and barter. Without the ability to trust that the future will have value in it, I'm only going to go with what is right in front of me right now. And a proof, it's interesting (I loves me some math), but, most of the time, I'm not going to say it has some sort of intrinsic worth that I'd trade, say, you a burrito for it.
I disagree. Trust is what makes systems efficient and effective. People who trust each other can cooperate together without expending resources on protecting themselves.
Consider Bitcoin - the cost of that trustless system that barely works is mind-boggling waste of electricity. Or look at layers and layers of bureaucracy people create; a lot of it exists to mitigate the problems of lack of trust by creating a system that doesn't depend on actors to be benevolent.
It's true that systems based on trust are fragile - malicious actors can abuse them, and if there are enough of them, the public trust will collapse and the system will go to hell. But that's only an argument for why should we fight for ensuring trust. Why we should punish defectors - the liars, the cheaters, the abusers. Because we need this to be efficient.
The problem with your argument is that "Company"Pay services are not gardens but conduits. You keep your money in the "garden" of your actual bank account and can extract it with whatever proprietary system you wish, because at the end of the day they're all just wrappers around the ACH network kept open by the federal government. There's no lock in when you can use all the proprietary systems at the same time with no negative effects.
I have a debit card, credit card, Venmo, Square Cash, and a checkbook and I use them all concurrently as I please, because at the end of the day they all interface over ACH with my credit union.
Looks like Walmart doesn't take Apple Pay or Android pay after a quick Google search. After the whole CurrentC thing, I don't think I'd trust any store owned payment apps. I thought the whole goal of Apple Pay was to simplify things, then all these stores want to make their own versions. To much fragmentation in the mobile payment space, better to just carry a regular major credit card, at least it's accepted almost everywhere universally.
I have read more than one article that many don't use Apple pay either. I have it and honestly have no reason to use it because credit cards just work. It would be one thing if fraud was prevalent and using your credit card was difficult but that has never been the case.
I still don't understand the business case other than trying to open a new revenue stream because it certainly wasn't solving a problem
I use Apple Pay sometimes. It's somewhat easier than using a card, which is a nice little advantage.
Unfortunately, Apple Pay is suffering from the wrong end of network effects. Support is far from ubiquitous, so you don't know whether any given transaction will support it. You can look for the NFC logo, but some places with the logo still don't support it. At that point, it's easier to whip out the card by default. If I've been to a place before and know they take it, I'll usually use it, but there aren't many such places for me.
Apple Pay in the UK is limited to £30 (like all contactless transactions). Is it the same in the US?
Because I don't see how the phone can be much quicker when plastic cards support the same contactless transactions, and have no buttons to fiddle with.
I'm not aware of any limits in the US, but it could just be that I haven't spent enough money in a transaction to encounter them.
The phone can be quicker than a plastic card because the phone is more convenient to reach. It's just in my pocket. Reach in, thumb on home button, put near terminal, approved, put phone away. With a card, I have to get it out of my wallet too. Not a big deal, but not as smooth. (Plus, with today's addictive smartphones and short attention spans, half the time my phone is already in my hand at this time.)
Strictly speaking you can leave the card in your wallet and just hold the whole wallet to the terminal. But this only works if you have exactly one contactless card (or if you don't care which card pays). Unfortunately the US is moving away from such cards. I used to have two or three, but I just checked my wallet and out of the eight payment cards I have in there, none of them support NFC. Sad.
Presumably it's more secure as it shouldn't expose your credit card number to the point of sale. Given the number of major hacks in that area in recent years, that should really be the #1 touted feature of such "X Pay" systems.
Yup. Comment below yours says EMV is fast, but it's just not. You need to stand there and wait with your card in the read for for the processing step. Maybe not 5 seconds, but a non-trivial amount of time. With a swipe, you'd have your card back in your wallet as the authentication was completing.
If we had chip+pin it would be a different story, but because we have to sign, the EMV+sign process is slower than swipe+sign.
That page is just plain wrong. You can put the card into a reader, type your PIN in, and get your card back almost straight away. 5 seconds is possible if you don't forget your PIN!
The process can be slower if the retailer uses an older system that hasn't got a permanent network connection. With some ancient terminals, you could hear a modem dialing up and talking to the bank. That was slow, but luckily those kind of terminals are now rare.
When swiping, my process is: swipe, put card back in wallet, put wallet back in pocket, wait for transaction to complete, go. (About 90% of my card transactions don't require a signature, because they're below the threshold for that.)
When using a chip, my process is: insert card, wait for transaction to complete, remove card, put everything away, go.
You'll notice that putting stuff away happens in parallel with the transaction in the first case, but they're in series in the second case.
It may be reasonably quick, but it's still noticeably slower than swiping. It's not a big deal, but it's just one of those little annoyances.
This is anecdotal, of course - but it's been much slower than swiping at every store I've used it at. These stores were using the exact same terminals for swiping just a few months ago, so it's not the network. Hopefully it's just crappy hardware in the terminals that's not optimized for EMV.
Edit: Swiping used to take 1-2 seconds to process, EMV seems to take about 10.
That page is specifically talking about EMV in the US, and for whatever reason, I've never seen a EMV 'dip' that takes less than 5-10 seconds here. Target for example has consistently been around 10 seconds every time I've used EMV there and I doubt they are using dial-up.
I've yet to have to put in a pin when I've used my chipped credit card in the US. In fact, I don't even know what the pins are on my credit card, just my debit/atm card.
Worse yet, not all the chip enabled readers have the chip part enabled. So you can stick your card in, wait, and then realize you have to swipe. Otherwise, you swipe, get the suprisingly aggressive BZZZRT sound, and then use the chip reader and wait at least 5 seconds while it authenticates.
It's not wrong, it really is slow. It may be different in other places, but in the US it is slow. Still depends on the store (besides network connections there are tons of different hardware setups), but it is never as fast as swiping.
In terms of speed from fastest to slowest: Apple/Adroid, swipe, swipe and sign, swipe and PIN, dip and sign.
It's really astonishing that the credit card companies thought that mandating a much slower process was going to work. Should be a huge boon for Apple/Android Pay though.
That's a problem with being first adopter: the considerable investment in early infrastructure leaves you with early infrastructure which is hard & expensive to replace, contrasted with later adopters who take advantage of scale, lessons, and bypassing incremental steps.
What is the purpose of the signature, anyways? Mine never looks anywhere close to the same as before, and most of the readers at the bad grocery store next to my apartment just select seemingly random pixels anyways when you touch it.
Is this seriously a security measure? Even if it did matter, it's on the back of the card anyways, for someone to copy!
All of my credit card companies and banks issued me new "chipped" cards within a month or so without my request, so I am guessing they are tryingto take it serious now
FWIW, the transaction time using the chip to authorize vs apple pay is night and day. The Apple pay swipe is quick and you can put the phone back in your pocket. The chip card has to linger through the authorization process and makes the whole thing feel slow.
The funny part with those chips in the US is that on most terminals I've used you can just click "Yes" instead of entering your PIN number. This gives you the option to sign for it. So it really doesn't solve the problem at all.
Afaik you can't do that in Europe. At least I've never heard of it being possible.
That's because US EMV is Chip+Signature not Chip+PIN (which is pretty stupid, why not go all out). Properly written readers should go directly to signature entry and bypass the PIN screen altogether since IIRC there's a flag on the card which tells it if it supports PIN or Signature.
There is EMV & Sign mode, and EMV & PIN mode, and it's set on the card and marked as 2 different transactions types by the bank.
Most american banks are issuing EMV & Sign cards, which means no PIN. You can set a PIN, but it's not a default flow and you have to call in to get it set.
You can do that with EMV terminals in Europe. I've done it repeatedly in Sweden. You hit the yellow button labeled "Signature" and they'll want to see an ID before they accept the signature.
And we're Chip+PIN here in general. But all merchants provide the Chip+Signature option.
That's one issue. I still cannot seem to get my mind around another, though.
Conceptually, I don't grasp how possibly exposing my PIN number at a point of sale is MORE secure. I just can't get past the idea that I'm now using the number I use to withdraw funds at an ATM at MORE places than just at my bank.
Your PIN is actually checked locally by the card before it signs the transaction. Sure, you're vulnerable to a POS system stealing your PIN, but they can't really do anything with it unless they also have your card's private key, which is pretty much impossible to get off the card without destroying it. This is a huge improvement over what it was before, where you only had to copy the mag stripe info to clone the card.
You're not exposing the PIN number. Properly designed card readers make the dialpad hard to read for anyone looking over your shoulders (you obscure it with your hand and there's a guard thingy around so they can't see your fingers).
And the machine itself checks the PIN against the chip. No sending anywhere, no checking by the clerk.
You only have to trust the machine itself. If you don't, you're fucked anyway because who says a hacked machine will only charge as much as it says it will?
Card+signature is security by "something you have", Card+PIN is "something you have and something you know". That's much more secure.
A signature isn't "something you know" because it's written on the card anyway. If it's not written on the card, then using the signature doesn't do anything in the first place. And nobody checks those signatures anyway. This is why for large purchases they ask to see your ID.
Credit cards get skimmed by altered machines all the time, trusting the machine is the sketchy part. The nice part with mobile payments is you only have to trust your device. I'm pretty sure a mobster hasn't found my phone in the middle of the night and altered it. I am not so sure about a POS terminal at any random store. Target's POS got owned, why should I trust anyone else?
If someone hacked the terminal I use for an Apple Pay transaction what exactly would happen? It's a one time token that gets passed to the terminal and I immediately get a push update about the transaction.
If you don't, you're fucked anyway because who says a hacked machine will only charge as much as it says it will?
If a machine charged you too much, either it would say so on the receipt and you could protest immediately, or the receipt wouldn't match the charge so you could protest later. Sure, the first few customers might get fucked, but soon the bad machine would be caught. OTOH if the machine processed the current transaction correctly while sending all your codes to the bad guys, it could do so until the store noticed its bad firmware, which could take years.
> OTOH if the machine processed the current transaction correctly while sending all your codes to the bad guys, it could do so until the store noticed its bad firmware, which could take years
Banks already correlate fraud reports to where customers have used their cards to track down offending stores that skim cards. They don't have to find the bad firmware, they just have to see "well 10 customers had their cards skimmed, and the only store they had in common was that one"
I think the long plan here is what Tim Cook specifically said when announcing Apple Pay - eventually, the iPhone will replace your wallet and keys. This in turn will make iPhone an essential part of life - a necessary goal for a product so successful to continue growing. Expect an identity product in the near to mid future.
That really sucks when you run out of battery then. Just don't understand the fascination to replace everything - maybe that's the Eagle Scout in me, but I'd rather have a backup plan, aka keys, wallet, etc on me than try and minimize pocket clutter.
The part of the iphone which includes "you" is stored in the cloud. You only lose/damage the hardware part, so get another one and backup from the cloud. Currently more expensive than when losing a set of keys or wallet but may not be in the future.
It's an actual selling point that Apple Pay stuff is only stored on the Secure Enclave on the device, and not in the cloud. I'm sure any house key type stuff Apple would implement would work the same way.
Lose your phone and you lose your payment instrument and your keys... no thanks.
I think it's as much about repeat customer intel as it is direct revenue. Like loyalty cards. Then if they get into the credit business, via app or otherwise, it's fees and fines and interest too.
I have it and honestly have no reason to use it because credit cards just work.
This is exactly what I thought, but I started using Apple Pay, anyway, because Discover is offering 10% cash back on all in-store Apple Pay purchases through the end of the year. That's too good to pass up. Now that I've been using it for a while, I wish it were available everywhere. It's a small thing, but taking my phone out of my pocket is the most natural thing in the world. Subjectively, the process feels smooth.
I've had my debit card canceled for fraud three times in the last four years, after only dealing with vendors I'd think would be reputable. I LOVE Apple Pay and similar layers between vendors and my credit card.
On the same note, I will never, ever use something like CurrentC that gives those same vendors a direct line into my bank accounts.
FWIW, my personal experience has been about 90% success rate. They have a pretty specific case that they don't support, and it's almost always with old systems. My use case was rewards program based, e.g. a gas card. I now am able to carry a two slot wallet with my driver's license, Coin, health insurance card and my ATM card (which would also work on Coin, but they cautioned about machines with "auto" feeding. Obviously, YMMV and I'm in a major city, so it might not be as useful in the sticks.
Very much what I was thinking. To add, the integration of mobile (itemized?) receipts is nice, but not nice enough for me to have to install and maintain an app on my device just for one store; an app that will undoubtedly hound me through push notifications about sales and other garbage.
Not just for one store: just for The Store. Walmarts the nations largest retailer with a momentum and presence that few stores have. They're putting that "not just any store" attribute to use here to break past that reaction in many potential users. It will work for many.
I live in a rural area where I'm sure a majority of people shop exclusively at Walmart. For someone like that, it would probably be a great app to have. I shop at Walmart too, but not as often as my local grocery store and specialty shops. I would much rather pay in one, standard way at all of them instead of some patchwork of differing methods: EMV card here, mag swipe there, NFC here, take a picture of a QR code there. It just adds hassle on top of the direct advertising platform(s) I would be voluntarily installing to my device. The benefits just aren't worth it.
fluxquanta is very close to the full answer. Note that my credit union "app" is just a wrapper for the website which also demands full access to my contact list and GPS and camera. For marketing reasons they want to know where I am and who I hang out with and what competing stores I visit.
Imagine your coordinates being determined to be the entrance of an OB/GYN office, and suddenly getting megs of push spam for your new baby. Or you appear to stand around the parking lot at the sportball field for hours every summer weekend, expect lots of push spam about charcoal, disposable grills, brats, picnic stuff.
What I don't understand is from a market dominance standpoint, why would walmart of all people want that data? Maybe they think they can market the data to other companies. Everyone has to shop at walmart sooner or later, maybe that means everyone will have their app sooner or later, so they'll have lots of privacy to sell to other companies.
The store that is cluttered and has palettes of junk clogging every aisle. The store that has a terrible meat selection. The store that smells like the inside of a Subway. The store that has made subsidizing your payroll with tax payer funded food stamps common. The store that pivoted from proud to be made in America, to one of the main drivers of outsourcing manufacturing.
It's an awful system, just like the rest of their stuff. I'm sure it's going to be very successful.
At least in the case of mobile ordering at Starbucks, that app sounds like it's adding real, additional value: It allows you to do something you otherwise can't do without the app.
Aside from the digital receipt thing (which, in my opinion, is really only useful if you are planning on returning an item or collecting receipts for tax deduction) where is the additional value with the mobile Walmart app?
The mobile ordering is a recent addition to the Starbucks app. I've been using it for payment for years -- mostly due to their rewards program, though that is available with a card too.
The hysterical thing is Apple Watch I saw this guy pay with it and then had to enter the pin and he was doing it through the watch interface. It took him FOREVER and I said "That was simple." He in return said "Simple as Brain Surgery." Don't they already have his finger print???
> The hysterical thing is Apple Watch I saw this guy pay with it and then had to enter the pin and he was doing it through the watch interface.
That's not how it works. You don't have to enter a PIN to pay with the watch. You just double tap the side button and hold your watch against the reader and the payment is made.
If you lock your watch with a PIN, then you have to enter the PIN the first time you use the watch after putting it on your wrist. As long as you continue to wear it, you don't have to enter that PIN again. If you take your watch off, then you have to put the PIN in again the next time you put it on and want to use it. It's so if somebody steals your watch they can't use it. Entering a PIN is something you tend to only do once when you put it on in the morning.
What probably happened was that he put his watch on in the morning, but didn't use it until he had to pay for something. Then he had to unlock his watch. In the vast majority of cases, the watch would already be unlocked and there wouldn't be any PIN to enter - the PIN isn't used during payment.
> enter the pin and he was doing it through the watch interface
I've never had to do this to use Apple Pay from my watch. Is this the flow for chip and pin cards (I've only got chip and signature)? If so - that's fucking terrible.
I love using apple pay from my watch, I don't even have to roll up my sleeve, just double tap the button and hold it near the reader.
It sounds like the watch may have been in a locked state (requiring an unlock by entering a PIN or unlocking a paired iPhone). If this were the case, the PIN entry is unrelated to using Apple Pay.
That's your take. I find paying w/ Apple Pay on my iPhone very seamless and I far prefer it over dealing with a card. I'm sure there's others out there that share that opinion.
I never have problems with it, and I use it every chance I get, but I certainly don't discount your experience. It sucks that you're having such a bad experience with it. If lots of folks are having the same experience, Apple's going to need to get those problems figured out if they want to win the war to replace cards.
My own experience is that Apple Pay works well when it's available. The problem is playing the constant game of "Does this terminal/merchant accept Apple Pay?" It's not always easy to tell. For example, Home Depot for several months had terminals that claimed to support NFC, but got hung up authorizing and eventually timed out if you actually tried to use it.
Not necessarily - for some stores, such as Walgreens (a US drugstore chain), the checkout flows look something like this:
Credit card:
1. Enter phone number (for loyalty card lookup)
2. Select "credit card"
3. Swipe card
4. Answer question about making a donation
5. Confirm credit amount
6. Sign
7. Confirm
(This is from memory, but it is roughly correct - I actually fear I may have forgotten a step or two)
Apple Pay:
1. Enter phone number (for loyalty card lookup)
2. Wake iPhone and bring near POS terminal
3. Place finger on home button until it buzzes (~1 second)
The flow for Apple Pay could be a little longer if you need to select a different card, but it is still both far faster and far simpler than the regular credit card flow.
That will change when Chip & Pin are common. Instead of just swiping, yes, yes, done, it will be inserting the card into the reader, the reader fails to read the chip, spitting on it, then trying again, and finally entering the pin and yes, yes, done.
Don't misunderstand, chip & pin is something the US has long since needed. But the chips are unreliable and entering a pin on some terminals is annoying. A phone with NFC might be easier than that, just fingerprint to unlock, and then press a single button on the phone.
As a european who has always had chip cards, it has never happened to me[0] that the reader failed to read the chip.
Granted, I don't use the card very often, but I would say in the last 10 ten years I have probably used it a few hundred times. Chip & signature, is usually slower.
You assume too much. I am from the UK, and the chip failing to read is a common occurrence, and some readers are well known bad (e.g. the cashier will be like "yeah it has been doing that all day" as you spit and polish the chip contacts).
But I do use my card(s) a great deal. So much so that the contacts on the chip are changing from gold to brown.
Once you've worn the contacts away you can hardly call them contacts any more (and it's unsurprising they fail regularly). Cashiers will also say that even if they've never seen another card fail to read :P it's to make you feel better.
Yeah, thanks to your post, I'm not looking forward to chips becoming more popular in the US.
I've never had a problem with a card reader not properly reading swipes or the magnetic strip wearing down. Only times I've had a swipe fail has been when I mis-swiped the card, and that's entirely on my own klutziness, not any kind of mechanical failure.
The future shouldn't be worse than the present, but it looks like that's the road we're going down...
I've never had a problem with a card reader not properly reading swipes or the magnetic strip wearing down.
Although it seems less common over the last several years (perhaps because now physical cards are often replaced several times before they nominally expire?), this used to be a serious problem. The most common fix for a read failure was to put the card inside a plastic grocery bag, pull the bag tight, and then reswipe it. I have no idea how this fixed anything, but I witnessed it working many times.
If you can find them anymore (and care enough), the pink pencil erasers are good too; they are very slightly abrasive, but not so much as to remove a layer of metal.
Swipe is very rare in the UK - Chip & Pin is the norm, at least it used to be.
Contactless cards were introduced relatively recently, where you just tap and go - no verification required (as such there's a limit on the amount you can pay using contactless). These are very speedy, I think more so than Apple pay, and are becoming increasingly popular.
In London (and possibly other places in the UK, I'm unsure) they have actually integrated contactless card readers into public transport, meaning you can hop on a bus/tube and pay for the journey with your card. Essentially, you can carry around a single card to commute, buy your lunch, go shopping and everything else.
Honestly, contactless cards, and this push to merge a few of the cards, kind of terrify me.
I already carry around my driver's license. I already carry around the access card to my school. I already carry around my student ID. I already carry around 3 different library cards. I already carry around my public transport card. I already carry around my debit card. I already carry around cash.
Even if you remove a few of those I still need to carry my wallet with me, so what difference does it make? I mean, other than the loss of separation of identities that comes with the territory. It's fine that my public transport card has low security, because you can't cash it out easily, and it only carries a very limited value anyway. Neither of those apply to my debit card.
But with a pretty low limit on daily spend with the contactless card, it effectively has limited value too - assuming you'd cancel it within 24 hours of it being lost or stolen in most cases - and is therefore difficult to 'cash out' on for a thief. So actually both do apply to your contactless debit card, really.
Actually there's likely more incentive to pickpocket a wallet for its cash contents, rather than the contactless card(s), given in a lot of wallets this will be both greater and, by definition of course, easier to cash out on! So it seems like carrying contactless cards doesn't add any particular incentive for theft above what has existed forever with carrying cash. Also, any other security vulnerabilities with the debit card, unrelated to contactless, still exist exactly as they do today.
So, it seems to me that merging cards, i.e. adding contactless and the ability to use it for transport, and other things, seems to just add marginal convenience with essentially no added risk of theft or fraud[1]. So yes, it's not a life-changing technology and it won't mean you no longer have to carry a wallet, but it represents a small win and certainly a step improvement for everyday convenience, so that's good right? I for one simply think the fewer cards I have to carry, the better, to be honest.
[1] though I have, to be fair, heard about the issue of thieves 'skimming' contactless cards in people's pockets, I don't know if that was always just a scare story or if it's actually a real exploitable vulnerability - but this seems likely to be a pretty far-flung edge case anyway.
I've had it for 8-9 years in the UK and I've had it failed many many times. More than I can count on both hands. The chips wear out, the readers wear out, the two get dirty, etc. it is a common nuisance, just ask any cashier.
I use my bank/credit card often, which is Chip&PIN/EMV. I have never had a problem with any of my cards in that way, ie. the reader being clunky and failing to contact the card.
I have however worn out a card that has been in use for a couple of years.
I would beg to differ that the chips are unreliable. Other solutions might be easier, don't know about that though.
The readers I've seen in the US are a bit slow. And sometimes you run into ones where you insert your card and then the clerk says "that's not turned on yet", but that will shake itself out. Haven't seen any issues with bad reads.
Canada has transitioned mostly to chip and pin (anecdotally, 95% of debit transactions I've done lately), and I've seen a really low failure rate on my cards. I can think of once in the last year I got chip errors on the reader.
I'm Canadian. I've never had a mechanical failure on chip&pin. A friend of mine seems to have failures constantly at a certain liquor store; dunno if it's the debit card she's using, or the store's reader, or both.
But back when we used mag stripes, I used to see failures all the time.
The anecdata in my life says chip&pin is FAR more reliable.
I've found that if you already have your phone in your hand, using Apple Pay is quicker than getting your wallet out. If you need to fish your phone out of one pocket, it's probably just as easy to fish your wallet out of another.
I like the idea of Apple Pay. It's not accepted at enough places yet to make it really worthwhile, but I could see contactless payments being a big thing in the future.
I currently pay with Apple Pay for two reasons. Security and Discover double cash back. Definitely not convenience. I always end up screwing up the double tap to pull up the cards and people give me looks because I'm holding up the line. That said, there really just aren't many places nearby that are taking it yet.
I had intended to use Apple Pay simply because of the Discover double cash back but hardly any retailers around me actually accept it so it's pointless for me.
You don't need to double-tap. Just touch (don't press) your thumb to the Touch ID sensor and put the back of the phone on the reader. The phone will wake up and automatically pay with your default card, as long as your registered finger is on the sensor.
We have a VERY large network of point-of-sale registers, all built around the old swipe-to-pay (often requiring signature) credit card model. Replacing practically every POS register in the country is not a simple task; we're rolling out "chipped cards" and new registers to support them (that's a lot of effort & money), but doing so will take most of a year.
That's why Apple Pay is such a big deal, and why the fuss about large businesses trying to roll out their own specialized (and usually inferior) version: yes we're starting to move to chipped cards, but even those are proving slow to use in many/most areas; most of the new registers also support NFC, making Apple Pay's "double tap a button and wave your watch/phone nearby" desirable - IF the store turns on the NFC & infrastructure.
Alas, Walmart is trying to avoid Apple's fees by putting support into their own app, which will be annoyingly slow.
> We have a VERY large network of point-of-sale registers, all built around the old swipe-to-pay (often requiring signature) credit card model.
Yeah, well, I'm in Canada and we had about the same thing, yet in the last 5 or so years we've seen 2 major changes (chip and pin followed by tap to pay) and most business have kept up, I haven't used the swipe in 3 or 4 years and the tap I'm now able to use tap at most places.
Is there a problem with adoption in the US for some reason that doesn't exist in other places? Perhaps Interac has some special power here or something.
It just seemed to stall out. Either the technology wasn't up to par, or (more probable) there wasn't the impetus to roll it out everywhere - failure to reach critical mass. For NFC, however, practically every card reader MUST be upgraded this year to support chipped cards, with NFC riding along as a given capability which Apple is leveraging with its "half the market" NFC-capable phones & watches. About this time next year I'd expect widespread availability of Apple Pay and other NFC services.
Its still faster than the chip reader in my experience. If magnetic strips are going to be a thing of the past i'd say phone payments will ultimately have the speed/convenience advantage.
I bet you they don't take Apple Pay or Android Pay because of transaction fees. Them rolling out their own payment system probably saves them quite a bit on fees.
They're taking credit and debit cards, so they have to pay some amount of transaction fees as a built-in part of that. I see nothing where this is any more beneficial to the consumer other than 'it's Walmart' vs. Apple Pay/Android Pay/Samsung Pay/etc.
No, they don't take Apple Pay or Android Pay because they don't have the POS terminals to support them and were part of CurrentC. Walmart wants the data and you can't get that when you don't know who the customer is. That's also why I use Apple Pay.
Apple Pay (and all other mobile payments) are an odd niche, IMO. They are great in the US, where the alternative currently is signing for a payment, and faster than PIN entry in countries that support chip+pin. But it's still more cumbersome than contactless payment cards.
Contactless is as quick as a payment will ever be: Hold your card near the reader for less than a second, and you're done. No need to wait for your phone to wake up and accept a fingerprint, fumbling around trying to hold the phone right, and then put it near the reader.
Once contactless cards become more prevalent, Apple Pay / Google Pay becomes pointless.
1) Contactless uses (needs) the same terminal technology as Apply Pay & Android Pay. So all three are in the same boat, and benefit from the expansion of the others.
2) Just speculating, but Contactless will probably move towards a PIN or something of that nature. The whole payment industry is moving towards 2-factor. Contactless by itself is not 2-factor.
Point 1 is why I think Apple Pay & others will be more of a niche - until the terminals become common, you can't rely on them, but once they are common, contactless cards become just as useful.
I used to be skeptical of contactless cards because of the lack of 2-factor. I thought it would be a liability (if my wallet gets stolen, now the thief can use my cards). However, the UK banks are quite vocal about promising to repay you if this happens. I've never had to put this to the test, luckily.
Also, there is still an element of 2-factor auth. Occasionally, contactless will ask for a PIN confirmation (perhaps random, or perhaps if the bank thinks the payment seems odd). A new card of mine refused to work until I had made at least one PIN payment with it, for instance.
Finally, there are low contactless payment limits - £30 right now. But these have been steadily rising as banks become more confident with their fraud systems. So, it seems that the payment industry is happy with the system.
> Point 1 is why I think Apple Pay & others will be more of a niche - until the terminals become common, you can't rely on them, but once they are common, contactless cards become just as useful.
Why is the extra thing you have to bring with you and probably use a PIN for "just as useful"? Mobile based systems are also interesting because you can just as easily use them for app based sales. Anything to reduce the friction of someone giving you money is going to be a welcome thing for retailers.
I actually think that banks in the future will stop issuing physical cards altogether and will rely on virtual cards linked with Apple Pay, Android Pay or some other contactless based system.
Contactless was introduced by the European banks well after Chip+PIN, to speed up low-value transactions. (5 years after in the UK, but more like 10 years to become popular.)
I think the apple watch is considered 2-factor, where you've already cleared the first factor by unlocking the watch with your passcode (or linked phone unlock)?
I've never used it, but contactless payment from a watch seems like it would be an improvement over retriving a card from my wallet to make a contactless payment.
A watch would make it easier, certainly. But it's a big limiter - smart watches are not widely used, and it adds another battery worry. If my tepid watch battery dies, now I can't pay for stuff.
For people who do use watches, it works great. The battery hasn't ever died once on my watch, but if it did, like most people I also have a phone, so the situation you're afraid of doesn't arise.
I try to use Android Pay when I can just for the security benefits of the one-use tokens. Sometimes it's easy, other times it takes forever.. particularly if my cell reception isn't great in the store. Once all stores truly make use of the card chip in the United States, I'll probably just use that because it's essentially the same thing. At this point probably 95% of the stores I shop at still want me to swipe the card rather than enable the chip receiver.
Same here. I don't care about the convenience, but mostly about the security benefits. In the past 4 years I had to get two credit cards and one debit card replaced after fraudulent charges / fraudulent ATM transactions. Yes - as a customer I'm not liable for those charges, but it's still annoying if it, e.g., takes a few weeks until your bank refunds you the hundreds of Dollars that someone withdrew from your checking account.
Walmart is in a position to pull this off. The equivalent Starbucks "card" is a major success. Large merchants with loyal followings can do this successfully.
The only reason I use the Starbucks "card" is that I get free drinks with it. Walmart will only succeed if they offered some similar type of kickback to the customer. I don't see it happening.
One few of my colleagues did some agency work for Walmart. A large web application for working in parts of their supply chain.
These guys are some of the best programmers I know and they had nothing but respect for Walmart tech teams.
The first time it came up that I made a casual assumption like "oh, they must be very 'enterprize-y' in their software development." and one of them corrected me by saying something to the effect of "You'd be surprised actually, they're not just surprisingly sophisticated technologically 'for an enterprise' but they're actually surprisingly sophisticated for anyone"
Anyways, small anecdote that stuck with me.
Walmart is apparently VERY strong in the IT side of things.
They always have been, I took a tour of their facilities in college. I recall being told at the time that every transaction that goes through any of their stores anywhere in the world is saved to a HD and stored in a vault somewhere. Kind of insane when you think about it.
It can be very handy. Five or more years ago, when you returned an item, they'd manually mark the line in your receipt, which works well enough. Yesterday I had to return an item for the first time since then, and after they read the barcode on my receipt from 2 months ago, I saw the whole receipt, or at least the end of it, flash on a small user facing LCD, and they didn't have to do anything else with my paper receipt. For a product quality return like this I can see many ways in which this would be useful.
Apple Pay seems to be more widely available and I find myself using it 6 out of 10 times here in the mid-Atlantic region. The majority of the times its easier as you don't have to endure as many button pushes/P.O.S. screens.
Walmart Pay is CurrentC all over again with a different name and still the same horrible user experience (download an app, open the app at the register.. give your phone to cashier to scan then go thru all this other POS motions?). As well the underlying fact why Walmart is pushing this to fatten their bottom lines vs. focusing on moving the needle forward for their consumers. Whether it's Apple Pay or another built in Pay service in one's phone no other downloadable app can provide the same world class user experience.
I believe it is CurrentC, at least Walmart was the leader in starting that in the first place. The whole point of this system is to know exactly who is buying what at Walmart. With Apple Pay (or similar) the store has no clue.
According to the Walmart press release you will not need to hand over your phone for it to be scanned. Instead you keep the phone and scan a code displayed by the register.
This already exists in R&D "stores" for certain large grocers within the US. It's definitely on their list of new features. But you wouldn't even have to scan, you'd just walk through a scanner with your goods.
Reminds me of my local library. They have RFID tags in all of the books and library cards, and a reader capable of scanning multiple tags at once embedded in the counter. You can just place a pile of books and your library card on the counter and a receipt prints out to tell you when they're due. No further interaction required.
This has been on the "Near Future" list for over 20 years now. I am guessing this will happen when it cost less then having cashiers and they are pretty darn cheap right now.
For me personally, I'd see the RFID as a selling point, not a cost point. As a customer, I'd much rather go to a store that has an automated and seamless checkout system than one where I have to wait in line for a cashier.
Using the Apple Retail app to pay for items like this makes me really nervous.
The 2 or 3 times i've used it i've ended up walking out of the store waving the product and the receipt screen on my phone around to make a point of being conspicuous so I don't get jumped on by security.
All the tricks customers can do to rob you with that approach means having cashiers or at least observers (eg self-checkout) is better. So, the trick is how to make the current model faster or more convenient.
As long as there are enough self-checks that one doesn't get stuck behind cavemen, they are definitely superior in terms of speed and convenience. Self-checks do get confused sometimes, and I guess it's important to make sure that only adults buy spray paint, but one clerk can handle those situations for a number of check stations.
Good point on service. Real reason those are there, though, is to pay less cashiers. Their usability was originally horrible and they forced it on people anyway. They've gotten a lot better, though.
A lot of items at Wal-Mart have anti-theft RFID tags on them, though, and it would be a pain to say "oh you can't buy this shirt or that video game through the app".
Are they just generic RFID tags or do they identify the items? If they identify the items there has to be an easy way to match the items in the cart vs what has been paid for, no?
IIRC, it depends on the item. Some clothes have anti-theft tags that spill ink all over the garment if you don't remove them correctly. Other items (video games come to mind) seem to have a mass-produced chip sticker that is about the size of a rice grain.
I've seen this implemented in a few grocery stores in Europe (Switzerland, if memory serves). I didn't see a large proportion of customers using them, however.
Thank goodness, another separate wallet to keep track of with non-linked data, another vector for potential theft, and no clear reward for me.
Starbucks app has a rewards play, Taco Bell app has customization... but without some compelling magic for non-frequent users, I don't see how this helps the company since it doesn't really seem to help the consumer (and so would have limited penetration).
He's not talking about that. He's talking about the fact that, at any Wal-Mart you care to patronize, you'll find that while they have sixteen or twenty tills installed and ready to use, they have maybe three actually staffed and available for checkout, so you end up standing in line for five or ten minutes even when there's hardly anyone in the store, and when it's busy you get to choose between waiting half an hour and taking your business elsewhere.
Jim Walton (Sam Walton's son) owns 96% of Arvest Bank, which is exclusive to Walmart in the Midwest.
Arvest is a growing financial network of banks and related services, which Walmart has been connected to since 1961. It's not a stretch to think that Walmart would create it's own payment network by proxy.
It sounds more like they're integrating their stores with their online site. You scan the register you're at when paying for something, and then you can pay with the app -- you probably need your credit card info saved to your Walmart.com profile or something as well.
All of these pay with your phone things are really pointless until we can also show ID with our phones. As long as we are required to carry physical government issued id's we'll still need a wallet, and since we are carrying a wallet anyway why not just keep your cards with you as well. Until using my phone for things means I wont have to carry my wallet, I just don't see the benefit.
>> The result is an innovation that will make the ease of mobile payments a reality for millions of Americans.
I don't think this is an innovation but more of an evolution of an already existing process.
>> ”The Walmart app was built to make shopping faster and easier,”
I have to get wallet from pocket, open it, take out card and swipe - 4 actions.
OR
I have to take phone from pocket, unlock it by tapping the screen 6 times (dont mess up), opening the app(, maybe navigating to the scanner), then scanning - 4+ actions.
That is neither faster nor, in my opinion, easier.
Where's the benefit for me (as a consumer) with these electronic payment systems?
The fastest way to pay is cash---how many times have you waited around a credit card machine waiting for the transaction to go through? Anyway, the big time sink is in the shopping experience, waiting in line, and checking out the items. Who cares how long it takes to pay? Focus on getting ride of waiting in line.
As someone who pays with credit card I get pretty upset with people who pay with cash. People fumbling around for exact change. The person working the register has to deal with bill or coin shortages: "oops we're out of quarters hey can someone bring some to my register?" Not to mention the overhead incurred by having to deal with all the cash at the end of the day and dealing with shortages.
very incorrect. Visit a country with near-100% NFC contactless card rollout like AU or NZ. Contactless cards(paywave) are effectively instant. Checkout lines are noticeably faster, probably 2x with small/single item counts.
Everyone sighs & judges the person paying cash while they hold up the line for everyone else.
The US will eventually catch up, and you'll all wonder why you waited so long.
You are entirely correct. Perhaps a failure of imagination causes companies to spend so much effort on marginal "improvements" like this while ignoring the big issues. After all there are already about seven different ways to pay so even morons can imagine there being another one.
Given that I don't walk around with my phone in my hand, it takes about the same amount of effort to pull a card out of my wallet as it does to extract my phone from my front pocket and then find the app to pay with. No thanks.
You are not the average Walmart shopper that relies on market bottom prices that Walmart is best at. Neither are you probably the average Walmart shopper that is sticky to Walmart discounts, rebates, and weakly deals.
Most people don't have their phones in their hands when they shop, either, especially at a Walmart where you're more likely to be pushing a buggy than anything. The only time I usually see someone with something at Walmart other than their object of payment is if they found an ad at another store which is cheaper. Payment by phone is largely a solution looking for a problem.
Most people also don't have their wallet in their hands when they are walking around. This usability and natural action argument is sort of moot and non impactful to this a discussion. If I really wanted to keep arguing, I would say that people waiting in line to pay are probably browsing their phone while waiting, so the transition to paying is not cumbersome. It's still a terrible argument for Walmart Pay. But, not as bad as saying that folks won't use Walmart Pay because the buggy is occupying their hands.
The probability of finding most things that are cheaper elsewhere than Walmart is extremely small. Their margins and their entire business model depends on that. So your anecdotes of people finding something cheaper is not material.
And finally the good 'ole "solution looking for the problem." It seems it is more and more the default "I-cant-extrapolate-but-this-sounds-clever."
I think I've heard it on some podcast that they are using Clojure to process these requests. Is that the project? I know Walmart uses the language so I am thinking it's probably it. Which is kinda cool.
I'd rather they just open Apple Pay instead of a less secure, more cumbersome alternative. I'm not scanning QR codes so far and I'm not planing to start anytime soon.
Nope. I'm male. I have three cards in my wallet (debit card, credit card, driver's license). I never said paying with a card is a "hassle", but between the two, paying with my phone is just so much quicker and easier.
Generalizing that HN women (or any, for that matter) are more likely to have a "stupid number of CC's" or are "digging through a purse for your wallet constantly" is fairly off-putting.
I don't really understand the "chip off shoulder" in this context. You seem to think people are objecting to inquiring about gender. I was pointing out that your kinda gross generalizations are as much or more objectionable (and even more so after having just inquired about gender).
For reference, here's your message. I'm not sure how it can be interpreted much differently.
"Are you female?
I ask because I can't imagine it being that much of a hassle unless you're sporting a stupid number of CC's or you're digging through a purse for your wallet constantly."
One of PayPal's initial strategies was to maximize transactions for which both the payer and payee were PayPal customers. This decreased PayPal's operating costs and reduced fraud by a large amount. Sounds like everyone wins, right?
That's simply not what currency is. Currency is an transferable i.o.u. worth whatever the creditor says it's worth. The most pervasive currency is currently the greenback. Every additional party or layer between you and the U.S. government increases credit risk and transaction costs everytime you make a transaction outside the pay network your currency is held in.
Visa is so convenient because they try to be everywhere, because that's their business. Apple is not a payment network. Walmart is not a payment network. Walmart Pay is simple one part of Walmart's portfolio. Since it's not their core product, they will by necessity make compromises that negatively affect their Walmart Pay from time to time in order to benefit some other part of their business. Look to GE Capital for a case study of what can go wrong there.
Just as Facebook is a walled garden for communities, these pay networks are walled gardens for currencies. Some are actually really great, just as Facebook is actually a really great community site. But at the end of the day it's not your garden. With other options such as Visa or cash, I find it difficult to justify turning over yet another critical apect of my daily life to a profit driven corporation according to the limiting and onerous terms and conditions they set.
Phew. Now I can go back to watching Wes Craven's "Shocker".