Apple Pay ease internationally

[se99jmk]

I'm fortunate to live in London, where I can use Apple Pay on my watch daily for most transactions: transport, lunch, drinks, etc

Double click, touch, done.

While doing some recent travelling in Canada and the US the experience has been hugely different, and on a three week trip I haven't used it once!

The main hurdle is of course how few places seem to have implemented contactless payments.. Vancouver seems to have more chip & pin, and quite a few terminals which LOOK like they support contactless, but the salesperson usually states that it isn't enabled!

Even when there is contactless, the sequence is more like:
- ask if you can use contactless
- get handed machine
- confirm English
- confirm amount
- confirm if you want to add a tip
- confirm tip amount
- confirm total amount
- USE CONTACTLESS

No wonder signing is so pupil at! Swipe, sign, done (ok, well, working out the tip bit, but still seems faster than the sequence above)

So, has anyone else had experience of using it in different countries, with similar experience?

 

[JayLenochiniMac]

Even when there is contactless, the sequence is more like:
- ask if you can use contactless
- get handed machine
- confirm English
- confirm amount
- confirm if you want to add a tip
- confirm tip amount
- confirm total amount
- USE CONTACTLESS

This sounds like a sit-down restaurant. Where in the US did you find one, because I have yet to see it?

 

[davwin]

We live in the UK and travel back to the US semi_regularly and have the same issues. It's a little surprising how many places still can't take a chip n pin card or contactless versus the UK where, as you posted - it's everywhere.

 

[JayLenochiniMac]

I sure hope chip and pin is faster in the UK, because chip and signature is significantly slower compared to swiping here in the US.

 

[BarracksSi]

Why has the US been so slow to update point-of-sale devices to include EMV cards and contactless payments?

One notion says it's because the US telecom infrastructure was reliable enough to authorize transactions immediately, while merchants in other countries needed to save the authorizations until after close of business.

http://arstechnica.com/business/201...ecade-old-why-doesnt-the-us-rely-on-them-yet/

In a conversation with Ars, Conroy explained that before EMV was first made available in the early 2000's, telecommunications infrastructure in places like the UK was relatively expensive to use constantly, “so when you went to make a purchase at that time, when the credit card got scanned through, you had an offline authorization process where the credit card would get swiped, and the merchant would store up all of the transactions for the day.” At the end of the day, the merchant would send the credit card details back to the issuer for verification, but that lag meant that criminals had more time to commit fraud.

That telecom cost was not as prevalent in the US, where merchants didn't need to batch up transactions to send back to the issuer. Instead, merchants sent off credit card information as they received it, and merchants could be alerted more quickly to the use of a stolen card. According to Conroy, in 2004, 0.14 percent of total credit card transactions were fraudulent in the UK, whereas 0.05 percent were fraud-based in the US where card information was not kept in batches.

 

[BarracksSi]

Sit-down restaurants here in the US will be particularly slow because of how the employees rely on tips for a significant part of their income. Their paychecks are often lower than minimum wage because tips from customers are thought to cover the shortfall.

So when the restaurant uses a handheld card reader like they do in the rest of the civilized world, the patron and waiter suffer an awkward social moment of setting the tip amount in the waiter's presence.

 

[JayLenochiniMac]

Sit-down restaurants here in the US will be particularly slow because of how the employees rely on tips for a significant part of their income. Their paychecks are often lower than minimum wage because tips from customers are thought to cover the shortfall.

So when the restaurant uses a handheld card reader like they do in the rest of the civilized world, the patron and waiter suffer an awkward social moment of setting the tip amount in the waiter's presence.

Yeah, they should leave it behind, rather than hover over the patrons waiting for them to complete the transaction. An increasing number of restaurants in the US already have Ziosk devices on the table and all they need to do is add Apple Pay to it.

 

[lah]

This is my frustration here in the US. There are so many roadblocks to use touch less payments. Last time I was in the UK for business I used Apple Pay everywhere. So convenient. I just started being able to use it at Starbucks in my city but everytime the cashier looks at me and says, not it does not work. I have to tell them, "trust me, I just used it here yesterday". Then they look all surprised when I do it. IMO Apple needs to do a better job getting the message out here in the US, 'cuz vendors are doing zero to promote it. I think Whole Foods was the only one who was proactive about it.

 

[JayLenochiniMac]

IMO Apple needs to do a better job getting the message out here in the US, 'cuz vendors are doing zero to promote it. I think Whole Foods was the only one who was proactive about it.

No matter how good of a job Apple does in promoting it, it's the vendors who ultimately need to change, as too few of them are offering contactless.

 

[BarracksSi]

IMO Apple needs to do a better job getting the message out here in the US, 'cuz vendors are doing zero to promote it. I think Whole Foods was the only one who was proactive about it.

Apple can only do so much when the credit card companies, point-of-sale (POS) device makers, and retail conglomerates have their own influence.

CVS, a pharmacy chain store, infamously denied Apple Pay because they couldn't track customers' buying habits. They didn't publicize the part about tracking customers, though -- they simply said Pay wasn't compatible. They were also trying to implement their own contactless payment tracking called Current-C, which still doesn't work.

When the credit card companies' liability rules changed recently -- was it last October? It's about retailers being required to carry the burden of fraudulent CC transactions -- I asked my corner grocer about what he had been told. He had no clue what I was talking about.

There are a lot of competing interests here, and not all of them want to promote extra-secure, un-trackable payment methods.

 

[lah]

No matter how good of a job Apple does in promoting it, it's the vendors who ultimately need to change, as too few of them are offering contactless.

Most vendors will have to switch their POS terminals to chip readers which many come with touch less payments, so the capabilities are there. I think Apple needs to put the carrot on the stick and incentivize vendors and the public to use it. Maybe do an ad on tv comparing how fast it is to use Apple Pay vs. a normal chip transaction (which is tediously slow). Something. We are just not used to the technology here in the US. Europe and other places have had it for years - Apple should try to get the word out in this country.

 

[BarracksSi]

It's not as much Apple's problem as it is retailers, POS device makers, and CC companies being real sticks-in-the-mud about the whole thing.

Too many chefs in the kitchen, too many hands in the pot.

 

[JayLenochiniMac]

Most vendors will have to switch their POS terminals to chip readers which many come with touch less payments, so the capabilities are there. I think Apple needs to put the carrot on the stick and incentivize vendors and the public to use it. Maybe do an ad on tv comparing how fast it is to use Apple Pay vs. a normal chip transaction (which is tediously slow). Something. We are just not used to the technology here in the US. Europe and other places have had it for years - Apple should try to get the word out in this country.

It's not as simple as that. Some retailers, such as CVS, are reluctant to switch because they still want to track customers, which isn't possible with Apple Pay.

 

[BarracksSi]

It's not as simple as that. Some retailers, such as CVS, are reluctant to switch because they still want to track customers, which isn't possible with Apple Pay.

Which ends up being a reason I would rather use Apple Pay.

It's dumb, though, because CVS has their little bar code cards you carry and can scan even if you pay in cash. So they're keeping track of what people buy and they still don't need credit card info to do it.

Sometimes I don't bother scanning my CVS card because I don't want to carry a four-foot-long receipt.

 

[tmiw]

Sit-down restaurants here in the US will be particularly slow because of how the employees rely on tips for a significant part of their income. Their paychecks are often lower than minimum wage because tips from customers are thought to cover the shortfall.

So when the restaurant uses a handheld card reader like they do in the rest of the civilized world, the patron and waiter suffer an awkward social moment of setting the tip amount in the waiter's presence.

They just don't really want to spend the money, is all. And they don't have to thanks to chip cards not having a PIN.

 

[Louis C]

The problem in the USA is that they have too many banks. Too many very conservative consumers who still swipe their credit cards if they're not still writing a check! I have activated apple pay in April just before my trip to Europe and there I was able to use it practically everywhere including restaurants as there is no tipping. Back in Canada now find that most stores works just as well as in Europe, but restaurants with the tipping issue, paying with apple pay is impossible.

I also hope that the $100 paying limit will soon be raised!