It seems Apple are pushing for something
that the gaming industry has been trying to do for years, go completely digital
and move away from physical items. In this case they’re using their patented Apple Pay system to encourage
people to stop using their credit cards to purchase items and instead complete
all their transactions using their phones. But could they really kill the need
for Credit Cards?
Well they’re certainly trying to as they
plan on managing this feat using a system of contactless payment that allows
their users to store their credit cards details on the phone. They then take
their phone and wave it at special reader or have a clerk scan it to accept
payment for items. The general idea of this system is to make it so that their
consumers can make their payments faster and easier.
Although this may seem like a Buck Rodgers kind of gizmo
contactless payment has been around for a few years now as a lot of major
companies like Starbucks, PayPal, Google and even McDonalds use it, they just
haven’t had any particular success with it.
Where Apple chimes in is that more people
are familiar with their brand and their mobiles offer advanced security for
their users to guarantee safe online transactions. Plus you can get the app for
the majority of Apples mobile devices so you’re not confined to one specific
model of iPhone.
Downloaded in the same way you would get
mobile gaming apps the Apple Pay system is pretty clean cut and easy to
understand. All you have to do is enter your information into it or scan your
cards using your phones camera, your card details are then stored in your iPhones Passbook app which you can use
to hold your card details or generate special one-use codes to enter to pay for
your items.
It could in principal work very well since
a lot of retailers now use contactless payment systems, although it’s kind of
limited to just that. This isn’t great when you compare it to other successful
mobile payment systems like PayPal who you can use to pay for literally
anything from retail items to even topping up casino accounts.
In fact, PayPal payments are so popular that
people have even started to make comparison sites like Paypal-casinos.com for example just so
people can check out the best ones because there’s just so many of them now.
Another stumbling block in Apples way is
the fact that they’ll have to convince their consumers that storing their
sensitive information digitally will be completely safe. This is also going to
be extremely difficult in the wake of the breaches in data security at some of
the big retail brands like Target who were hit by hackers and had 40 million of
their customers contactless card payment details stolen.
So with all that considered could Apple Pay
completely kill the need for credit cards? We don’t think so, there are still
going to be times when you’ll need a card to make a payment if a reader doesn’t
work or worse your phone battery has died.
Overall contactless payment will definitely
still be around in the next few years, it might have a slightly bigger presence
than it doesn’t now but it will still be considered a gimmicky additional
option not your main payment source.
