Apple Pay - A year later, what's the verdict?

[tmiw]

EMV is a pain. Not the plug and wait so much as it takes a lot longer to process.
However ... I asked a couple of local merchants I frequent if they are getting NFC/EMV or just EMV. Both said their terminals are under contract and they get the cheapest they can. Sounds like that's a "No" to NFC.

Side note: watched a lady with a 6+ the other day at Whole Foods drop her phone when paying. We all cringed. It broke. How about an Apple Card that works just like a CC?

Not necessarily; Square's new one is only $49 and does have NFC. If you're not already using Square though, the cost of a new tablet could be an issue.

And something I forgot to mention earlier--the tap enabled cards developed such a bad reputation that people are mistaking the new EMV cards for those. Yet another reason why we're not going to get tap capable cards any time soon, if ever.

 

[boltjames]

Agreed.

I think that's because very few US retailers are taking NFC payments seriously.

I hope that after EMV has been out for awhile (and the quick card swipe has been replaced but a much longer card 'dip'), retailers will reconsider NFC as it will be a quicker and easier (IMO) way to pay.

Another thing is this: We privileged Apple enthusiasts often fail to realize what's going on in the rest of the world. Search Google and:

Americans who were rejected for a new credit card = 7 percent.
Americans age 18 to 49 with no credit cards = 34 percent.

No different than when you go through an EZ-Pass quickpay lane on the highway and see all those people lined up still paying cash at toll booths. Having a good credit rating is not easy for many people. Add to that some elders who don't even know how to check their iPhone's for voicemail and then subtract those who don't have an iPhone with NFC and you're looking at a small subset of people who could even use Apple Pay to begin with. For a Walmart or a CVS, the vast majority of customers are coupon-cutters with flip phones and no credit rating. They have no urgent need to support NFC anything right now.

BJ

 

[tmiw]

Another thing is this: We privileged Apple enthusiasts often fail to realize what's going on in the rest of the world. Search Google and:

Americans who were rejected for a new credit card = 7 percent.
Americans age 18 to 49 with no credit cards = 34 percent.

No different than when you go through an EZ-Pass quickpay lane on the highway and see all those people lined up still paying cash at toll booths. Having a good credit rating is not easy for many people. Add to that some elders who don't even know how to check their iPhone's for voicemail and then subtract those who don't have an iPhone with NFC and you're looking at a small subset of people who could even use Apple Pay to begin with. For a Walmart or a CVS, the vast majority of customers are coupon-cutters with flip phones and no credit rating. They have no urgent need to support NFC anything right now.

BJ

Keep in mind that Apple Pay works with debit cards too. The bigger issue is the unbanked, of which there are quite a few.

 

[tmiw]

I was thinking: the liability shift date is now less than a week away. Why not see how many places actually flip on NFC/keep NFC on at the same time as EMV? I've been keeping track of which places flip on the latter for a while now here:

https://emvacceptedhere.com/

If you run into a place that takes the chip on your credit or debit card (either by actually using the chip in the slot or seeing "insert" on the screen and the slot lit up), search for the retailer location in question using the box on the upper right; the map will move to that location and show a box that will let you add the retailer to the map. If the retailer shows "tap" or the Apple Pay/NFC logo somewhere on their terminal's screen or if your iPhone 6/6S brings up Wallet/Passbook when holding your phone over the terminal, choose "business supports Apple/Android Pay" before saving the listing. There are also live statistics if you click on the "recently added" link at the bottom, including the number of NFC accepting locations on the map. You can also report errors using the report link for each entry (e.g. if a place actually does or does not have NFC support).

Maybe we'll be able to see for sure whether most retailers only enable EMV or enable both. I think contrary to what a lot of media said during Apple Pay's initial announcement, most won't do NFC (at least initially), but I'd love to be proven wrong on that.

(Mods, hopefully this post is okay.)

* * *

Anyway, a few days ago someone wrote a sort-of rebuttal to some of the points in this thread: https://medium.com/the-payments-ind...-of-the-emv-user-experience-fail-66037ee17ec8. I don't think EMV is that slow but there is going to be a learning curve involved.

 

[aajeevlin]

I was thinking: the liability shift date is now less than a week away. Why not see how many places actually flip on NFC/keep NFC on at the same time as EMV? I've been keeping track of which places flip on the latter for a while now here:

https://emvacceptedhere.com/

If you run into a place that takes the chip on your credit or debit card (either by actually using the chip in the slot or seeing "insert" on the screen and the slot lit up), search for the retailer location in question using the box on the upper right; the map will move to that location and show a box that will let you add the retailer to the map. If the retailer shows "tap" or the Apple Pay/NFC logo somewhere on their terminal's screen or if your iPhone 6/6S brings up Wallet/Passbook when holding your phone over the terminal, choose "business supports Apple/Android Pay" before saving the listing. There are also live statistics if you click on the "recently added" link at the bottom, including the number of NFC accepting locations on the map. You can also report errors using the report link for each entry (e.g. if a place actually does or does not have NFC support).

Maybe we'll be able to see for sure whether most retailers only enable EMV or enable both. I think contrary to what a lot of media said during Apple Pay's initial announcement, most won't do NFC (at least initially), but I'd love to be proven wrong on that.

(Mods, hopefully this post is okay.)

* * *

Anyway, a few days ago someone wrote a sort-of rebuttal to some of the points in this thread: https://medium.com/the-payments-ind...-of-the-emv-user-experience-fail-66037ee17ec8. I don't think EMV is that slow but there is going to be a learning curve involved.

Wonderful! I have been looking at something like this; a community sourced map for chip and Apple Pay. Just added a few location from my shopping trip from last night hope that helps.

One suggestion I'd like to make is that it'd be nice to break out the color. Right now everything is under green. Maybe you can have a different color for chip and another color for Apple/Android Pay. It's hard to have to click on each one to see if they have either or both.

 

[tmiw]

Wonderful! I have been looking at something like this; a community sourced map for chip and Apple Pay. Just added a few location from my shopping trip from last night hope that helps.

Thanks! Glad it's useful Also, Kohl's is chip enabled already? Interesting, will have to visit at some point.

BTW if the terminal is customer-facing, also choose that there's a PIN pad. (Don't choose it if it's something like a smaller business where they have to hand the terminal to you after entering the amount.)

 

[cub850G2]

Wonderful! I have been looking at something like this; a community sourced map for chip and Apple Pay. Just added a few location from my shopping trip from last night hope that helps.

Kohl's supports Apple Pay already?

 

[aajeevlin]

Kohl's supports Apple Pay already?

The sales rep saw the phone and goes "I don't think....", then my iPhone goes, beep, payment accepted, even before she finished her sentence. I even did it the second time after my wife decided to pick up something more at the store.

 

[aajeevlin]

Thanks! Glad it's useful Also, Kohl's is chip enabled already? Interesting, will have to visit at some point.

BTW if the terminal is customer-facing, also choose that there's a PIN pad. (Don't choose it if it's something like a smaller business where they have to hand the terminal to you after entering the amount.)

Wait! I tried Apple Pay only, no idea if the chip will work (unless they go together?).

My local home depot went from Apple Pay to no Apple Pay....that was annoying.

 

[tmiw]

Wait! I tried Apple Pay only, no idea if the chip will work (unless they go together?).

My local home depot went from Apple Pay to no Apple Pay....that was annoying.

Apple Pay and chip don't go together. Larger retailers can actually turn on one or the other individually, and same with the merchant processor for smaller businesses. It's why Home Depot disabled NFC immediately after they enabled chip and why most of the Apple Pay official retailers don't support chip.

EDIT: an easy way to tell after the fact if chip's enabled is to check the receipt. They're supposed to have a string that begins with "A" and has a bunch of zeros (followed by various digits depending on the type of card) on it, called a "AID". If that's not there, then it's unlikely chip's enabled.

 

[aajeevlin]

Apple Pay and chip don't go together. Larger retailers can actually turn on one or the other individually, and same with the merchant processor for smaller businesses. It's why Home Depot disabled NFC immediately after they enabled chip and why most of the Apple Pay official retailers don't support chip.

EDIT: an easy way to tell after the fact if chip's enabled is to check the receipt. They're supposed to have a string that begins with "A" and has a bunch of zeros (followed by various digits depending on the type of card) on it, called a "AID". If that's not there, then it's unlikely chip's enabled.

Didn't not see the "A" stuff on my kohl's receipt. So maybe that's a no for them for now.

 

[tmiw]

Didn't not see the "A" stuff on my kohl's receipt. So maybe that's a no for them for now.

No worries, I'll go ahead and remove it for now. Kohl's is supposedly enabling Apple Pay this fall, which I guess is now. Maybe they're waiting until all their stores have it before announcing?

 

[steve knight]

also it can be slow and you still have to use a pin or sign. and it is random what you will have to do. but stores are just as bad not getting smart cards working either walmart had notes saying to use it but it aways looks up or gets declined with my wells fargo card. As usual the US is falling behind.

 

[tmiw]

also it can be slow and you still have to sue a pin or sign. and it is random what you will have to do. but stores are just as bad not getting smart cards working either walmart had notes saying to use it but it aways looks up or gets declined with my wells fargo card. As usual the US is falling behind.

The good news is that the PIN/sign thing should mostly go away at Apple Pay official retailers once they turn on chip support.

The big question is what will happen at the non-official retailers. There's speculation that when Kroger enables chip within the next week or few, NFC won't be on at all. That might be the case for Safeway as well; my Vons store just says "swipe or insert card" on the screen for instance and my iPhone doesn't recognize any NFC field from the terminal. Also only Rite-Aid and Best Buy seem to have officially abandoned MCX so most of their other retailers might keep it turned off. Apple Pay would get a huge boost (not to mention the "accepted nowhere" meme getting a shakeup) if the two biggest grocery store chains in the US accepted it.

 

[aajeevlin]

The good news is that the PIN/sign thing should mostly go away at Apple Pay official retailers once they turn on chip support.

The big question is what will happen at the non-official retailers. There's speculation that when Kroger enables chip within the next week or few, NFC won't be on at all. That might be the case for Safeway as well; my Vons store just says "swipe or insert card" on the screen for instance and my iPhone doesn't recognize any NFC field from the terminal. Also only Rite-Aid and Best Buy seem to have officially abandoned MCX so most of their other retailers might keep it turned off. Apple Pay would get a huge boost (not to mention the "accepted nowhere" meme getting a shakeup) if the two biggest grocery store chains in the US accepted it.

I don't get this though, so this is more of a preference? It sounds like from a technical perspective the machine is able to support both chip/NFC at the same time. So it's really down to the stores to decided what they want to enable? In that case why not just enable both? You have the machine already, credit card company probably charge them the same transection rate anyways. Anybody have more insight into this?

So one gets turn on and the other gets turned off? Some weird stuff going on here. This is the first time I learn about the whole reason why home depot lost their Apple Pay support though. But NFC takes so long, I inserted my chard yesterday, I think it must have taken about 20-30s before the transection was done (This is even without having to enter the pin).

 

[cub850G2]

I don't get this though, so this is more of a preference? It sounds like from a technical perspective the machine is able to support both chip/NFC at the same time. So it's really down to the stores to decided what they want to enable? In that case why not just enable both? You have the machine already, credit card company probably charge them the same transection rate anyways. Anybody have more insight into this?

So one gets turn on and the other gets turned off? Some weird stuff going on here. This is the first time I learn about the whole reason why home depot lost their Apple Pay support though. But NFC takes so long, I inserted my chard yesterday, I think it must have taken about 20-30s before the transection was done (This is even without having to enter the pin).

Best Buy has EMV Contact and Contactless MSD somehow, no idea how they did it, but Apple Pay/Android Pay works quite well there!

 

[aajeevlin]

Just curious anybody else has been having issues with Macy's lately? Since I switch to discover card it had not worked at Macy's. Not sure why.

 

[tmiw]

I don't get this though, so this is more of a preference? It sounds like from a technical perspective the machine is able to support both chip/NFC at the same time. So it's really down to the stores to decided what they want to enable? In that case why not just enable both? You have the machine already, credit card company probably charge them the same transection rate anyways. Anybody have more insight into this?

So one gets turn on and the other gets turned off? Some weird stuff going on here. This is the first time I learn about the whole reason why home depot lost their Apple Pay support though. But NFC takes so long, I inserted my chard yesterday, I think it must have taken about 20-30s before the transection was done (This is even without having to enter the pin).

With most larger retailers, the "guts" of the credit card processing is actually in their Point of Sale system (an oversimplification but it works for this post). This is called an "integrated" setup. They basically have to implement logic to handle NFC and to handle EMV and get all of that certified by various organizations in order to be able to run those transactions. There are also semi-integrated and standalone setups, which are much easier and require less work on the part of the retailer. Pages 5-6 of https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/merchants/Visa-Merchant_EMV_Chip_Acceptance-2014-07-17.pdf goes into more detail on that.

Anyway, everyone started fairly late on the transition to chip, so rather than assume liability for transactions just to get NFC working some may be just getting chip working for the time being. They might come back to NFC, they may not. Smaller businesses are more at the mercy of their merchant processors. The good news is that it's a lot easier for a smaller merchant to add support for both, mostly since their merchant processor's basically just enabling both if the hardware's there. The bad news, however, is a few-fold:

1. Merchant training to date has been extremely poor. I've seen a fair number of new terminals at small businesses that are positioned poorly for NFC, so even if they're listed on MasterCard's website/app there's no way you'd be able to use Apple Pay with them. They may not even know how to run such a transaction.
2. It's actually possible to buy a terminal without NFC support at all. These are generally the low end cheap models. The small business may have purchased these before Apple Pay was announced and simply doesn't want to spend additional money so soon to upgrade again. I don't know how many of these businesses exist though so I can't quantify how big of a problem it is.

That's why it's a good idea to try to quantify the problem through stuff like the map that I posted about above. For all we know the "unofficial" Apple Pay accepting businesses may very well become official ones very soon and the conclusions being reached in this thread will become very different.

 

[aajeevlin]

With most larger retailers, the "guts" of the credit card processing is actually in their Point of Sale system (an oversimplification but it works for this post). This is called an "integrated" setup. They basically have to implement logic to handle NFC and to handle EMV and get all of that certified by various organizations in order to be able to run those transactions. There are also semi-integrated and standalone setups, which are much easier and require less work on the part of the retailer. Pages 5-6 of https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/merchants/Visa-Merchant_EMV_Chip_Acceptance-2014-07-17.pdf goes into more detail on that.

Anyway, everyone started fairly late on the transition to chip, so rather than assume liability for transactions just to get NFC working some may be just getting chip working for the time being. They might come back to NFC, they may not. Smaller businesses are more at the mercy of their merchant processors. The good news is that it's a lot easier for a smaller merchant to add support for both, mostly since their merchant processor's basically just enabling both if the hardware's there. The bad news, however, is a few-fold:

1. Merchant training to date has been extremely poor. I've seen a fair number of new terminals at small businesses that are positioned poorly for NFC, so even if they're listed on MasterCard's website/app there's no way you'd be able to use Apple Pay with them. They may not even know how to run such a transaction.
2. It's actually possible to buy a terminal without NFC support at all. These are generally the low end cheap models. The small business may have purchased these before Apple Pay was announced and simply doesn't want to spend additional money so soon to upgrade again. I don't know how many of these businesses exist though so I can't quantify how big of a problem it is.

That's why it's a good idea to try to quantify the problem through stuff like the map that I posted about above. For all we know the "unofficial" Apple Pay accepting businesses may very well become official ones very soon and the conclusions being reached in this thread will become very different.

Thanks for the input, this is a nice read.

 

[tmiw]

Happy EMV Day, everyone.

So far I haven't seen anything different. 7-11, CVS, Subway and (likely; didn't try to buy anything but the slots weren't lit) Rubio's still don't have chip enabled yet. Kohl's and Petco may have enabled it and NFC in the case of the former, but that still needs to be confirmed. What about others?

 

[iGeek2014]

Okay so Apple Pay has only been out in the UK a couple of months but I have to say when it's worked, it's worked and I've found myself conducting more contactless payments in places I visit that have it.

There are a couple of times where I've had to resort to Chip and PIN (user error, rather than the terminal) but I do feel it's one of the ways forward in completing checkout.

With the much improved TouchID sensor and double click to access my stored cards from the home screen it's definitely speeded up the process quicker when I can't quite reach the NFC terminal (without performing some obscure pose in the mean time).

Won't be visiting London until mid-December to try out my Apple Watch on the Underground but I hope it's easier than digging my iPhone out and pre-authorising the device before tapping in and out of my journey.

I just wish the business I work for would join the 21st century and gain contactless!

 

[dk001]

Have tried Apple Pay - between errors and lack of pay points it became a back burner function.
Now I am trying out Samsung Pay. Whoa! This is what Apple Pay should have been from the inception.

 

[tmiw]

I heard on another forum that Best Buy isn't respecting CDCVM even though they have EMV turned on now (signature required for a many hundreds of dollars purchase with Apple Pay). Frankly I don't know why Visa and MC continue to allow integrated card processing when retailers can't seem to get anything right.

 

[tl01]

I use Apple Pay quite a bit; sometimes three times a day. I love it and always look for opportunities to use it. It is becoming more and more prevalent where I live and I hope it continues. I WAY prefer it chip and pin.

Just read that Kohls is starting to accept it. That will increase my usage of Apple Pay then. I'll be glad they aren't exclusive with MCX.

Used it twice in the two hours since I posted this.

 

[kilcher]

Still waiting to try it with no end in sight. The two cards I use - debit card and credit card, 2 different issuers - still aren't set up to use it.