5 Reasons You Should Start Using Apple Pay Today
Although purchasing products and services with good old-fashioned cash is a tried and tested system, we are now living in a digitally connected society where alternative methods of payment are fast catching on.
Digital wallet services such as Apple Pay enable anyone to make payments using compatible devices, threatening the popularity of cash or debit and credit cards. In the first three days of Apple Pay availability, more than one million credit cards were registered with this payment method and the value of the company’s shares shot up accordingly. This could have an effect on the likes of Forex – the largest financial market in the world.
Some people still have reservations about Apple Pay but it can actually provide both consumers and businesses with a number of far-reaching benefits. Here’s how:
1. Simple payment processing
The ease in which you can make and accept payments has got to be one of Apple Pay’s biggest selling points. Once the consumer has saved credit card information to Apple Pay, all they need to do for every purchase thereafter is hold their device near an NFC reader and approve the transaction.
As opposed to handing over cash and fiddling with change or going through the formalities of a credit card transaction and waiting for it to go through, Apple Pay takes a matter of seconds.
2. Safe and secure platform
Seeing as your information is stored and hidden within Apple Pay, there is no chance that someone could clone your credit card. In fact, Apple doesn’t even use your credit card number for processing, as this is done by a token called ‘the device account number’.
Also, Apple Pay is an implementation of the EMVCo specification, which is widely considered the most secure payment mechanism by many industry experts.
3. Privacy over your purchases and personal information
Apple has said that it will not track shopper transactions or store and sell data. This is actually why loyalty cards exist, as retailers want to provide you with incentives to spend more money at their stores.
On top of that, the use of device account numbers means that retailers won’t be able to see the consumer’s name or other confidential information, such as their billing address.
4.No additional fees for retailers
In order to appeal to all organisations regardless of their size or sector, Apple says it will not charge retailers or consumers a fee for its service. Instead, it will take a portion of existing credit card transaction fees.
In the two years leading up to Apple Pay’s launch, the Cupertino-based company was in discussions with all the big credit card companies to straighten out the finer details.
5. More enjoyable experience
Let’s face it, using your mobile phone or smartwatch to pay for something is cool – certainly cooler than fiddling around for change while you hold up the queue. It also has the potential to be a lot more convenient, as you might not need to carry around a wallet or purse in the future either. You might have worried about your wallet being pinched on a night out but your phone has greater peace of mind – with passwords and biometrics making it harder to unlock that a wallet packed with cash.
Although Apple Pay automatically selects the default card from Passbook for payments, you can easily override this with a swipe and simply select another option depending on the purchase.
