I am 100% more likely to buy from your online store if you have a simple checkout process that lets me use Apple Pay. And if you want an email to send the confirmation to use Sign In with Apple and I will default to buying from you over another provider. It’s as simple as that: I get far less spam, I know my privacy is being secured, and I get to support a company that supports the easiest checkout process ever.
As long as it also supports regular credit card payment. Being locked into a single companies proprietary payment service doesn't sound like a good thing to me.
As far as I can tell the W3C Payments API standardises the path from payment provider to merchant, but the customer to payment provider interaction is the proprietary part.
I.e as a merchant I can easily integrate Apple Pay as an available payment option in the same way as others, but as a customer I can't use Apple Pay unless I'm using Apple sanctioned devices/software and have an Apple account. Other commenters mentioned it only working in Safari, and according to Wikipedia it only works on Apple devices.
You can only use Apple Pay in Safari. But if you use the standard W3C Payments API, a Chrome browser running on an Android device with suitable security will use Android Pay just like an Apple device running Safari will use Apple Pay.
Apple Pay is Safari’s implementation of the standard. Apple stores your payment information and uses the Secure Enclave for authorization. How could Apple ensure a secure path on non Apple browsers or on non Apple hardware?
What’s the use case where you would use Apple Pay as opposed to your hardware vendors implementation on a non Apple device?
This specification standardizes an API to allow merchants (i.e. web sites selling physical or digital goods) to utilize one or more payment methods with minimal integration. User agents (e.g., browsers) facilitate the payment flow between merchant and user.
Ah, I see. So if a merchant supports paying with Apple Pay, they also support paying with Android, or any other payment provider that supports the same standard?
Not automatically. If a merchant does the work to support Apple Pay they don’t get Google Pay “for free”. But if you’ve done the work for Apple Pay, you’ve covered a lot of the ground necessary to support Google Pay, for example.
> I.e as a merchant I can easily integrate Apple Pay as an available payment option in the same way as others, but as a customer I can't use Apple Pay unless I'm using Apple sanctioned devices/software and have an Apple account. Other commenters mentioned it only working in Safari, and according to Wikipedia it only works on Apple devices.
Yeah. It is called the Apple ecosystem. Don't like it? Don't use it. I personally have been very satisfied with Apple so far.
There are providers that do this like the people from Square. As an Apple ecosystem user with an Apple Card (that I use almost exclusively) I just prefer Apple Pay but it combined with Sign In with Apple means I don’t have to give the merchant my real email (yes I know other email providers provide one time emails and such but for me the Apple sign in feature is much easier and convenient).
The best non-Amazon experience I had recently was with Butter Cloth.
No sign up, no need to enter my name and address, supports Apple Pay (amongst others).
If more companies did this I’d be more inclined to shop around than default to Amazon.
I don't like the "convenience fee" for two reasons:
1) I object to being charged to give someone money. If you tell me I owe you $90 and that you accept this list of methods to pay and I go to use one of those methods and you reply "oh to use that method I will charge you an extra $3.95," I am going to use the method that costs me an extra $0 because I already agreed to give you $90; you can work out how to collect that $90 in a way that only costs me the $90 I owe you.
2) It is an outdated fee. When it first started, electronic payments were new, novel, and cost actual money to put into a workflow. Now, physically handling checks and cash often have more cost to the merchant than paying electronically because the cost and logistics of electronic payments have been so streamlined. This fee has turned into a cash grab.
(That first point is why I still use paper checks. My apartment complex charges almost $50 to pay rent with a credit card and $10 to use a debit card. But walking the check three minutes from my front door to the night drop the day I get paid is entirely free since my credit union gives me a box of checks every year and I go through far fewer than one box per year. If my apartment complex finds that taking paper checks costs them money but electronic payments don't, they can adjust their pricing to reflect that.)
Seems to me they did adjust their pricing, and in a way that is both transparent and fair, i.e., that doesn't force check paying tenants to subsidize card paying tenants by raising overall rents for everyone.
It’s rewarding a merchant for a service you like: I like paying with Apple Pay so I will encourage merchants with my wallet who do so. Eventually it will be the norm for merchants to take Apple Pay and Samsung Pay and AliPay and others maybe with a square space etc but contactless payments in real life and seamless payments online is something I want to advance.
I think you're missing the point of the fee. The company (Visa, Discover, Apple) that processes the transaction charges a fee (flat or percentage) for each purchase. This is why they add the fee.
Of course apartments charge high fees for rent - they want to ensure they collect the full amount of their monthly rent according to the contract. A $50 fee on say 1000 dollar rent is 5%, ensuring they cover whatever Visa is going to charge them on the transaction. And if they get a little extra income for themselves - then all the better for then as you got some convenience out of it by not having to write a check!
Yeah, I don't really have a problem with merchants passing card processing fees onto customers. I feel like those fees being hidden to consumers/spread out evenly amongst all payment options is probably somewhat distorting the market.
Surprising that you can pay with a credit card to begin with. You could probably turn a profit by using a reward/cashback card (in a lot of cities that's easily $10k+ a year in spend).
Though presumably that's $50 a month.. So perhaps not.
I would only pay more to invective adoption of Apple Pay. Hopefully others see and adopt it too and try to win back business with a lower price with Apple Pay.
I won’t pay extra convenience fees just for online ACH. I’ll just use my bank’s free bill pay service to mail them a check and they can deal with having to deposit paper.
