Banks and Credit Unions to Team Up Against Apple Pay Fees
macrumors.com48 points by Brajeshwar 2 hours ago
48 points by Brajeshwar 2 hours ago
I get why the banks are not happy, but I can tell them that I am not going to use Chase Wallet, Bank of America Wallet, Citi Wallet...just pay the fee and be thankful for the reduced payment friction, which they invariably make money from. PS: Nobody is going to use Paze (yet another half baked wallet), other than to collect the free $10 to sign up for it.
Somewhat related, even Walmart relented and now supports Apple Pay/Contactless. Every big merchant has now relented (Kroger, Home Depot, Walmart).
Now do developers.
I don't really care about any of Apple's business partners being upset about their business terms with Apple. Developers want a bigger cut, banks want a bigger cut, Foxconn wants a bigger cut.
My interests as an Apple user are aligned with Apple. But even if I wasn't an Apple user, market forces determine what the "fair" cut is for everyone.
Or Apple Pay can just be like Google Wallet is on Android? The alternative is not multiple apps.
A possible compromise is to allow Apple Pay to be a monopoly as long as it doesn't charge any fees.
I would use my non-profit credit union Wallet if it meant less fees on their end.
granted i am a bit of schadenfreude at the thought of poor poor megabanks having to pay....fees...
Walmart only relented because they finally broke through the final missing link of the contactless issue. They got customers conned into giving their phone numbers at checkout, just like it's the grocery store.
Cards get linked to accounts automatically behind the scenes based on first6/last4 card number tracking, then everyone else self-selects to punch their phone number on the screen.
Same reason Walmart Radio is such gruesome auditory cancer, it's part of the data collection and advertising vehicle.
That could be part of the reason, but also I think insisting on chip all this time just really slows down a store that doesn't really spend on cashiering all that much. Tap to pay can shave off a few seconds on every transaction (ever been behind someone in the store who finally pulls out their wallet, finds the business end of their card, inserts it, waits 20 seconds...).
Millions of transactions a day, over thousands of stores, it can make a huge difference in time saved.
Initially I was casually (didn’t dig into the issue) fine with Apple allowing only a single access to payment via NFC due to the opportunity for fraud, which was Apple’s justification.
But I haven’t heard of it happening with the wild-west Android NFC payments, much less widespread problems with the essentially unconstrained use of QR code payments on SE Asia (e.g. Alipay).
So as an iPhone user I’m happy for Apple’s lockdown going away. I just hope it doesn’t mean that in future I’ll need to install a dozen payment apps and have to figure out which when I buy things.
Pix and the other variants are the way to go for money transfer, it's just that these monopolies won't be happy to forfeit their easy money, both credit, banks as well as Apple. They are all fighting for monopolies, they must cease to exist for the good of the common folk.
The only time the People have anything in our sick phony republic protected is when their interests happen to coincidentally align with those of an adversarial oligarch. Not interested in digging through the 15 layers of competing interests, corporate spin, lies, and economics to determine if that’s the case here but it’s sad in any case that stories like this are the only hope we the People have of getting any crumbs out of this system.
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