Apple Pay can shake payments market significantly – Swedish Dagbladet

Bart, Payair, Google Wallet, Isis Wallet (now Soft Card). The list is long on the mobile payment solutions that have been launched in recent years.

Many companies have felt called, but few have succeeded. The problem for all these solutions is that they failed to reach a critical mass of users among consumers and merchants. Despite this, there are many indications that Apple’s newly launched service, Apple Pay, may actually shake the rigid pay market significantly.

The presentation of Apple Pay was one of the main points at Apple’s launch event earlier this month. The focus is electronics giant’s first in the pay area, and has been a hot topic in the industry for several years before launch.

Apple’s paid service is a mobile wallet based on so-called near field communication (NFC). The solution is similar to that competitor Google launched 2011th Unlike Google Wallet, Apple’s solution also equipped with fingerprint reader Touch ID, found in the iPhone 5S and later models, giving it an additional security layer.

The service is based that users swipe their smartphone over a reader at the store checkout, when the company’s smart watch Apple Watch launched in early 2015, although it could be used to make payments.

Most card issuers have already jumped on the bandwagon. Among Apple’s partners include Visa, MasterCard and American Express, but also a number of banks, such as Bank of America and Citibank. Can the solution scattering can expect to generate significant revenue for Apple, since all banks and card issuers pay 0.15 percent of each transaction fee to the company.

Although a number of chain stores has joined Apple Pay, including fast-food giant McDonald’s and Starbucks. No date for a European launch is still not set, but depends on how quickly Apple can reach agreements with European banks and card issuers.

What is it that speaks against Apple Pay? First, the solution is so strongly linked to the company’s other product offerings. IPhone currently has a market share of around 42 percent in the United States, according to comScore. The service also works exclusively with later iPhone models, which further limits the user base.

A further reason to put a lid on the enthusiasm is that a large group of consumers have not yet seen the benefits of mobile wallets, especially on the already functioning European chip card market.

To attribute the launch of Apple Pay the same meaning as that of the iPod in 2001 is enough to hope too much, but with both chain stores and banks behind Apple definitely come to redraw the map pay.

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