Follow-up: Apple Pay has been launched

• Apple Pay has been launched

• High participation rates

• The competition has begun

Apple Pay has launched: with success, in terms of the initial numbers; into a competitive field, in terms of the reactions from other market participants; and only in the US, to the dismay of the German savings banks. But let’s take a look at these points one by one.

In conjunction with VISA and MasterCard, Apple has released the initial data on its new payment service. According to these numbers, no less than one million users uploaded their credit card details in order to use the Apple Pay service in the first 72 hours after its launch. The company also clarified the scale of this achievement: With these numbers, Apple Pay has already won more customers for its contactless Point of Sale (POS) than the rest of the competitors put together.

Speaking of the competition… a differentiated picture presents itself here. Timed to coincide with Apple Pay’s launch, the first [large American companies] (the drugstore chains CVS and Riteaid, the retailers Walmart and Best Buy as well as others) have announced that they will not support the service.

Walmart is turning to drastic measures in order to enforce this: dismantling NFC terminals at the till. This step is counter to the retailing decree that every aspect of the business must serve to increase convenience, but it does serve the other decree to obtain and store as much information as possible about each customer.

Meanwhile, the rest of the players can’t wait to jump onto the bandwagon themselves. The German savings banks have already entered into discussion with Apple, proposing themselves as the pilot partners for the German launch of the service. So far, Apple has remained silent about its concrete plans for the expansion of the payment service.

It’s too early to tell whether Apple will manage to emerge as the largest integrator in the field of NFC smartphone payment. It is just as plausible that the market will experience consolidation in some areas as a result of Apple Pay’s entrance, but that it will remain fragmented overall – especially in light of regional differences in technology and customer preferences.

http://www.wired.com/2014/10/apple-pay-already-bigger-competitors-combined-says-ceo-tim-cook/
http://www.appy-geek.com/Web/ArticleWeb.aspx?regionid=9&articleid=30874989
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/finanzen/digital-bezahlen/apple-pay-sparkassen-interessiert-an-iphone-bezahldienst-13217580.html