Apple Pay Stores and Retailers: Despite Growing Popularity, Mobile Payment Service Won't Add to Profits Anytime Soon
In the three months that Apple's mobile payment service, Apple Pay, has operated, it has already achieved a goal other mobile wallets could not: persuading consumers to use it.
Wall Street Journal reports eBay, Google and numerous mobile-payment startups could not entice shoppers to pay for purchases with a smartphone, but Apple Pay is different.
"Our customers are saying it's safer," said Brittany Salcedo, night manager at Canyon Market in Springdale, Utah.
The Canyon Market supermarket has been using the wireless readers that work with Apple Pay for three weeks. Salcedo estimates that 30 percent of shoppers are using the service. The machines also accept Softcard, a competing mobile payments service, but Salcedo says more customers use Apple Pay than Softcard.
McDonald's and drugstore operator Walgreens adopted Apple Pay early. Both companies said last month twice as many shoppers are paying with Apple Pay since the wireless readers arrived.
Finance-industry experts believe Apple Pay has caught on with consumers because of the popularity of Apple's gadgets, a marketing push from banks and security concerns after customers' debit and credit card information was exposed after data breaches at retailers like Target and Home Depot.
To pay for a purchase using Apple Pay, shoppers wave an iPhone (or upcoming Apple Watch) in front of a wireless reader. The transaction is completed with a fingerprint. Authorization relies on a one-time code. Many believe since no card number is used, the chance of theft is reduced.
Apple Pay may offer a more secure payment option, but it does not solve credit card fraud. The Drop Labs blog does a good job explaining how Apple Pay security works. The good news is no one is breaking Apple's TouchID technology, hacking the NFC transmission protocol or stealing iPhones to pay for purchases.
According to Drop Labs, the problem is criminals are buying stolen credit card numbers online and loading those numbers into Apple Pay. It provides criminals an easier way to create a fake digital credit card without having to make a physical fake. Drop Labs claims some issuers are experiencing fraud levels are as high as 6 percent (i.e., $6 of each $100 spent is fraudulent). Regular credit cards have fraud rate averages under 1 percent.
In terms of revenue, Apple had a history making last quarter of 2014, but Apple Pay will be nothing more than a footnote.
"Apple Pay is not likely to be a material revenue stream on its own anytime soon," Colin Gillis, analyst at BGC Partners, told CNN.
Apple receives 15 cents for every $100 in Apple Pay transactions, according to Gillis.
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