Earlier this week, Major League Baseball and MasterCard announced a partnership that has seen Apple Pay support roll out at concession stands at ballparks in San Francisco and Kansas City for the World Series. As part of its World Series promotional push, MasterCard also debuted a pair of television ads during last night's Game 1, featuring Apple Pay and the company's "Priceless Surprises" program that has seen cardholders surprised with various rewards.
One spot features former New York Yankees star Mariano Rivera and longtime Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, while the second features Kansas City Royals legend George Brett, with MasterCard promoting surprises such as meet-and-greets with the stars and tickets to World Series games.
On its Priceless Surprises website, MasterCard notes it has surprised over 70,000 cardholders with various rewards, and now Apple Pay gives users more ways to win.
Apple launched its Apple Pay mobile payments service on Monday with the debut of iOS 8.1, with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus supporting the service in-store and in apps, while the new iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 support it for in-app purchases only.
MasterCard, Visa, and American Express have all signed onto the program, as have over 500 banks and a number of major retailers. Launching first in the United States, Apple Pay is now accepted at over 200,000 points of sale and the cards and banks responsible for the vast majority of U.S. credit card spending are compatible with the service.
Top Rated Comments
'Priceless surprise' indeed.
"Hey, keep all of your financial details on a smartphone that can't even keep a stable wifi signal."
I hope you'll forgive me if I'm a little pessimistic about Apple Pay. No doubt it'll be big -- I just sincerely hope nothing goes wrong as that would be disastrous.
Yes, I would much rather hand my card with my account number, security code and signature to a waiter who takes it to the back to process it. No chance that system would have issues.
Well in the rest of the world (not America), we have this great thing called 'chip and pin'. And it's everywhere.
So the steps are:
1) take out your card
2) put your card in and type in your pin
I appreciate Apple Pay will be great across the pond, but it's essentially the same process -- except your phone is your card and your pin is your fingerprint. And as iOS 8 was a steaming buggy pile I'm sure you can grant me a little cynicism.
You missed this one:
3) hope a thief doesn't see your pin, then lifts your wallet and go spending while you are unaware it is missing
'Priceless surprise' indeed.
"Hey, keep all of your financial details on a smartphone that can't even keep a stable wifi signal."
I hope you'll forgive me if I'm a little pessimistic about Apple Pay. No doubt it'll be big -- I just sincerely hope nothing goes wrong as that would be disastrous.
The beauty of Apple Pay is that NOTHING of any value if kept on the phone, or kept by Apple. No CC#, security code, or expiration date. Your CC# isn't even transmitted to the vendor.
You might want to read up on it.
Google wallet never had this push not even remotely close
Apple should thank the NSA (or was it FBI) for complaining that their systems were secure enough that they couldn't be accessed by government spying. You can't buy that kind of publicity.
MC is really going hard in for the :apple:Pay
Might be irrelevant to some - but this is going to save them billions in fraud charges - that's why these banks are so happy.Even if the phone is stolen is useless since the thief won't have your fingerprints and you can easily disabled it using any browser.