The comments there are pretty much why people talk about a "distortion field" around Apple. It's basically person after person saying, "once all the iPhone 6 users start wanting to pay, they'll have to change their mind."<p>A few stats (from <a href="http://www.statisticbrain.com/wal-mart-company-statistics/" rel="nofollow">http://www.statisticbrain.com/wal-mart-company-statistics/</a>): Wal-Mart, as a country, would be the 19th largest economy on earth. Of every $1 spent in the US, $0.06 goes to Wal-Mart. There are 100,000,000 shoppers in Wal-Mart <i>every week</i>.<p>NFC needs to become the way you expect to pay for things. Otherwise, it's Passbook -- that thing you vaguely remember that your phone can do, but that you don't really use, because in the time it takes to figure out if you can, you could just swipe your card.<p>If anyone's going to push it mainstream in one big push, it will be Apple pairing it with new iPhones. But it's not a given that that's the way it plays out, and every large retailer who pulls out is important.
I have two thoughts on Apple Pay:<p>1) Android has had cardless payment for 2+ years now via Google Wallet. That being said, Japan has had similar technology for way longer. While the marketing machine that is Apple made sure to let everyone know how magical/revolutionary/awesome/brilliant this form of payment it, Apple is late to the game. Similarly, other products such as Softcard/ISIS exist too from non-smartphone companies. Thanks Apple for finally catching up.<p>2) Apply Pay will, however, finally give cardless payment the push it needs. Apple has the market power to get retailers to start (read: more than rarely) embrace this technology (for example: Passbook & tickets). That I can fully support Apple for as the iPhone is the single best selling phone and will get NFC into the hands of millions very, very quickly. And with the volume of devices + Apple's marketing of Apple Pay = great news for payment.
Apple Pay will have slow adoption simply due to it being tied to new phones and/or the US. That's tiny in global payments. Then I think its early traction comes via in app mobile payments. Things like Lyft and Uber. From there it'll branch out into physical retail. Short answer is the battle at retail is still 2-3 years away at least and that's OK
If the technology that Walmart is backing only requires a software update to existing phones then it is not nearly as secure as apple pay.<p>A lot of people are comparing Google wallet and apple pay like they are the same thing - they are not. A phone with compromised firmware could leak sensitive data with Google wallet but not with Apple pay.
It's pretty weird that both Walmart and Best Buy will probably be required to advertise Apple Pay and yet won't support it at their registers that is going to burn a lot of customers. If they don't want to support the NFC payment movement they shouldn't sell the products that have NFC. They are just going to regret this decision at some point when NFC is the norm and they have to do yet another round of POS upgrades.
is the fundamental act of a card swipe broken ? On on hand, I can clearly see the value of Square... and on the other hand, I can also see the value of business models like LevelUp (that commoditize mobile payments and leverage marketing budgets).<p>But is a disruption of mobile wallets vs credit cards even possible ? Why would a 19-year old college student prefer it ... or why would a 30 year old professional switch to it <i>over credit cards</i> ?
One general issue I would have with Apple Pay is that I use credit cards that give me specific rewards such as money back or airline status-related benefits. Of course, there's no reason that Apple Pay couldn't be tied into similar reward programs but until it is, anyone who currently uses a reward card is likely to keep pulling out the plastic rather than bump the phone.