A new report by The Wall Street Journal looks at the early performance of Apple's new electronic payments service, Apple Pay, finding strong signs of momentum behind the service. One of the key signs of interest in mobile payments comes from point-of-sales system suppliers seeing drastic increases in retailer interest following the launch of Apple Pay last October.
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Harbortouch has offered free wireless readers to its retailer clients since 2012, and in the month following the Apple Pay launch 68 percent of client orders asked for the readers supporting wireless payments. As of August of 2013, only 22 percent of its clients had installed such readers in their stores.
“It’s like night and day,” said Brendan Lauber, Harbortouch’s chief technology officer. “Now, merchants are actively coming to us and asking how to support this.”
The Wall Street Journal piece also covers the general surge in public acceptance for the service, remarking on recent stories that Apple Pay now supports cards representing about 90 percent of the credit card purchase volume in the United States, and that Apple's upcoming financial reports for the latest quarter may provide more details.
Top Rated Comments
I just wish some of the laggards like costco and Kroger would add apple pay functionality to their pos systems.
True, but Android does have majority market share worldwide and many Android handsets have supported NFC payments for years via Google Wallet. I don't care what NFC-compatible service customers are using on their devices (and retailers shouldn't care, either).
The retailers just need to buy NFC-capable POS units and deploy them with the NFC functionality turned on. Apple Pay is the best thing that could've happened for Google Wallet in terms of helping bring NFC payments more into the mainstream.