Venture Beat listed recently published a list of disappointments experienced with Apple Pay and makes the point that few others have that it really is just a form factor for payment cards:
First, it turned out that the “new technology” was nothing more than just a dexterous combination of our old, limping friends — plastic magnetic bank cards and EMV (EuroPay, MasterCard, Visa) chip cards — seasoned with shiny TouchId (which isn’t a new technology either, to be honest). Well, I thought, remembering the classics, maybe there is nothing new under the sun and Apple Pay isn’t an exception. At least it provided a more convenient way of payment than the older predecessors it imitated behind the scenes. So I patiently waited for the upgrade (not timed with either an iPhone or major iOS release) that would bring me Apple Pay.
The article continued to describe other disappointments with Apple Pay including the lack of NFC enabled terminals. The industry has been seemly keeping the number of NFC retail locations (not including parking meters, washing machines and vending machines) as a highly guarded secret. This certainly give credence to the use of QR codes which can be read or created by nearly all retailers, at least in a physical locations, and is available regardless of phone manufacture or operating system.
Now I am even more convinced that systems like Apple Pay, Android Pay, and Samsung Pay, which just pretend to be new technology but in fact are complicated (and therefore unreliable) superstructures based on multiple old mechanisms, must eventually be superseded by completely new things
Overview by Sarah Grotta, Director, Debit Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
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