Apple Pay coming to long-time holdout UBS soon

AppleInsider

UBS will finally end its holdout from adopting Apple Pay in the coming weeks as other payment solutions fall out of favor.

UBS will allow users to use Apple Pay for the first time

Apple Pay saw slow adoption among the Swiss banking industry, until their boycott and reliance on a single mobile pay solution lead to antitrust investigations. Starting in 2016, Swiss banks slowly started moving away from "Twint," their home-grown mobile payment system of choice, and allowed Apple Pay for their customers. Most of the major banks had adopted Apple's service, with a very large exception in UBS.

The bank made announcements via Twitter and Facebook ahead of its release, suggesting that it could launch Apple Pay support within the next few weeks.

Wir freuen uns, Apple Pay bald in unser bestndig wachsendes Angebot an mobilen Zahlungslsungen aufzunehmen. pic.twitter.com/1Q7467MD10

-- UBS Schweiz (@UBSschweiz)

April 24, 2020

A report from MacPrime detailed the slow transition of Swiss banks from their own solutions to Apple Pay. It appears that constant consumer pressure and antitrust investigations into consolidated payment solutions being used by the Swiss banks finally pushed UBS into adopting Apple Pay.

Apple Pay launched in 2014 as a contactless payment system for iPhone, and was presented as a fast and easy way to pay for things at the register. It later came to Apple Watch once launched in 2015, to further simplify payments. By 2016 Apple had moved Apple Pay to the web, which allowed users to pay using their Watch in tandem with their Mac, or Touch ID on Touch Bar enabled MacBook Pros.

Bart Y

‘Bout time.  Wish continued success for Apple Pay around the world and that Apple user ask for their banks and merchants to allow it .

Same for Apple Watch health apps like heart monitoring and ECG with countries’ Health Departments, although many are quite busy right now.

melgross

It’s still not very common on the web. And eBay, which early last year promised that by the end of the year most all transactions would be available via Apple Pay, has not kept their word. I buy a fair number of things there, and I only very rarely see Apple Pay as an option. It’s still almost all PayPal.

ihatescreennames

melgross said:

It’s still not very common on the web. And eBay, which early last year promised that by the end of the year most all transactions would be available via Apple Pay, has not kept their word. I buy a fair number of things there, and I only very rarely see Apple Pay as an option. It’s still almost all PayPal.

I thought that eBay said they would start the roll-out by the end of 2019 and didn’t put an end date on the completion. I’m with you, I rarely see Apple Pay as an option on eBay. Is there a good reason Apple Pay couldn’t be rolled out site-wide on the same day? I really don’t know.

I wish AP was available on the web more. I find it odd that Target accepts AP in their stores and in their app but not on their website. I’m sure there are other examples of that same inconsistent Apple Pay support. 

coffeetin

I’m pretty sure Walmart has yet to accept Apple Pay as well. They still continue to use their own proprietary app which is just plan stupid.

ihatescreennames

coffeetin said:

I’m pretty sure Walmart has yet to accept Apple Pay as well. They still continue to use their own proprietary app which is just plan stupid.

That’s a large part of why I won’t shop there. If I can use Apple Pay at one retailer and not at another, similar retailer, I go to the one that accepts AP. I feel like I’m in the minority on that, though, because if I wasn’t more places would be rushing to accept AP.

Rosyna

coffeetin said:

I’m pretty sure Walmart has yet to accept Apple Pay as well. They still continue to use their own proprietary app which is just plan stupid.

Walmart is still trying to use their monopoly to attack Visa. The “CurrentC” initiative (which never released an app that was usable or secure) was an attempt of major retailers (Walmart, Target, Best Buy, CVS) to collude against the payment processing market (especially Visa) by bypassing them and asking their US customers to give 1. Those companies access to your checking account, which has very little mandated fraud protections and 2. More access to your private data so they could target you with more ads.

CVS and Best Buy intentionally disabled their previously 100% working EMV Contactless Payment terminals as part of this collusion, only to re-enable them after customer backlash. Target later enabled the fully functional readers years after they rolled out their new PoS system that were meant address the numerous breaches Target had had over the years.

chadbag

When Apple Pay first came out there were a bunch of stores where it just worked, where it no longer works now. Our local Kroger owned grocery store, Smith's, had Apple Pay compatibility at first but then disabled all contact less payments.  I think I remember one of the big box home improvement stores had the same story.  I my grocery choices are Smith's and Walmart, and neither accepts Apple Pay, I'll usually choose  the cheapest (which is usually not Smith's).   I had upped  my Smith's visits when they accepted Apple Pay but now rarely stop there.  

Unrelated comment.  Interesting that the threat of monopoly investigation is what drove Apple Pay acceptance by Swiss banks.   Usually monopoly is the word used against Apple. 

melgross

ihatescreennames said:

melgross said:

It’s still not very common on the web. And eBay, which early last year promised that by the end of the year most all transactions would be available via Apple Pay, has not kept their word. I buy a fair number of things there, and I only very rarely see Apple Pay as an option. It’s still almost all PayPal.

I thought that eBay said they would start the roll-out by the end of 2019 and didn’t put an end date on the completion. I’m with you, I rarely see Apple Pay as an option on eBay. Is there a good reason Apple Pay couldn’t be rolled out site-wide on the same day? I really don’t know.

I wish AP was available on the web more. I find it odd that Target accepts AP in their stores and in their app but not on their website. I’m sure there are other examples of that same inconsistent Apple Pay support. 

No, they started the rollout early last year, and said most transactions would be available with it at the end of the year, 2019. Early last year I saw the first Apple Pay availability. I became excited by that, and thought it would progress smoothly. But then nothing more. I’ve done maybe 150 transactions since then, at least, and only got the choice maybe twice. 

Bart Y

IMO, because ebay had owned and created PayPal, even after they became separate companies, they still have a very cozy and integrated relationship.  PayPal knows if ebay allows other electronic payment systems or direct electronic bank access like Zelle, it would lose out on fee big time, IMO that’s why there is feet dragging at ebay.

re: Current-C from Walmart/Lowe’s/Rite-Aid/Home Depot, etc., their attempt was to avoid the extra fees and transfer of fraud protection for that cost to Europay, MasterCard and Visa when the EMV mandated chip cards and EMV compliant chip and NFC enabled readers were to be deployed by Oct. 2015.

EMV advises that after that date, merchants were responsible for fraud instead of the CC unless they implemented new readers and paid the relatively small additional transaction fee.  A ton of retailers in Europe and much of the world had complied but US retailers dragged their feet citing costs, integrating into their systems, and general procrastination.  They also liked their old, unsecure, skimmable mag stripe system because it was cheap, already paid for and CC covered the fraud costs.  

Walmart, et. al., also envisioned a huge consortium of retailers who, banded together, would have enough clout to bypass or avoid fees, create their own electronic contactless system, collect cumulative transaction data to share with each other plus target ads and offers to you, in exchange for a system which would pay directly as a check or debit from your checking account.  What could go wrong???

All you had to do was register your checking account info directly with the participating retailer in this MCX (Merchant Exchange) Current-C system and the retailers would be responsible and secure your bank info and contact information. (Yeah, right!!). 

MCX came up with this system - buy your goods at cash register.  Cashier would then generate a transaction QR code and show it to you.  You scan QR code with your smartphone app.  It verifies your account.  You ok the costs and account.  You authorize the transaction.  The transaction goes through and you show cashier, she gives you receipt.  Merchant has your transaction data, what you bought and where, which they share with every other retailer, building your profile, which they may sell as customer info.  How convenient!! NOT!

They got as far as recruiting (for a fee or dues) about 50-60 fairly major retailers, grocery stores, gas stations, etc. and took about 9-12 months to develop their system.  In the meantime, many retailers already had EMV NFC compliant readers and had allowed Google wallet/pay and early Apple Pay but then shut that function (NFC) off to discourage contactless payments!!  Pissed a lot of early adopters off.  It was only a software switch in their billing transaction system.

But Rite-Aid buckled and started allowing NFC and Apple Pay due to demand and loss of sales.  MCX threatened to “fine” them but additional retailers like Target were getting customer blowback on social media and some boycotting.  By the time MCX rolled out a pilot testing program in a couple of small cities in the Midwest (where stalwarts Walmart, Lowe’s, Home Depot are headquartered, more than half of the retailers had defected, the Pilot was pretty mediocre and MCX faded from sight.  Later Chase bought their back office tech to create Chase Pay.  

Today, Walmart, Sam’s Club (naturally) Lowe’s, Home Depot among others, steadfastly refuse all NFC payments.  I haven’t been in a Best Buy for years so I don’t know about them.  But 3/4 of the vendors and stores I frequent in SoCal accept Apple Pay and it’s growing.  The US is still so far behind in dropping mag stripe fraud-fraught 60’s technology and moving to modern digital mobile pay systems and full EMV compliance.  (Don’t get me started on similar old, old POTS landline telephone “service”, callerID, and spam robocalls!!!!)

Apple Pay had driven and disrupted (again) the contactless payment world through its well thought out security, privacy, tokenization, CC and growing bank acceptance, and of course, it’s willing-to-spend-and-use-Apple Pay affluent demographic compared to the underused, poorly supported/connected and lower spending Android demographics of Google Pay.  Samsung subsequently bought US based Loop pay to allow mag stripe emulation through its wireless charging loop, allowing transactions with the foot dragging major and mom/pop retailers.  But Samsung’s system doesn’t monetize much for Samsung (as does little of their software “services”) so they have little, IMO, little incentive to support it well - after all, they are primarily a hardware company through and through.

IMO, Apple is obviously the leader in smartphone based electronic POS payments through Apple Pay even with Android’s huge user base precisely because of Apple’s demographics and users, and that isn’t lost on retailers seeking an ever shrinking retail transaction and shopping market.  That’s also why some online retail systems (IMO) continue to resist Apple Pay, preferring to try to capture you, Your CC data and personal data through memberships, and use your transaction data (looking at you Amazon) for their purposes or sharing/selling, still.  

Same old same old old school retail thinking, disrupted and clinging.  Same goes for TV, Movie, and content creation and distribution vs digital distribution via cable/satellite vs now streaming and mobile consumption.  IMO Jobs knew where Apple TV was headed for as a skinny bundleless internet distribution system but like the record and music industry saw with iTunes, the TV/Movie industry did not want its old school broadcast/cable distribution model disrupted (IMO old white guys in power positions) and wouldn’t play along with Jobs, and Cook couldn’t get focused on content till the last few years.

now see where we are following Netflix’s lead.

substance

Rosyna said:

Walmart is still trying to use their monopoly to attack Visa. The “CurrentC” initiative (which never released an app that was usable or secure) was an attempt of major retailers (Walmart, Target, Best Buy, CVS) to collude against the payment processing market (especially Visa) by bypassing them and asking their US customers to give 1. Those companies access to your checking account, which has very little mandated fraud protections and 2. More access to your private data so they could target you with more ads.

Wal-Mart and the rest of the CurrentC (I still cringe at that name) gang weren’t necessary wrong to revolt against Visa as 3% transaction fees is ridiculous.  But instead of developing a win-win solution for both them and the consumers to incentivize the latter to switch, it was all win for them at the expense of the consumer.  This is where the real victory for Apple came when it comes to ApplePay.  Just like Apple did with digital music with the iTunes Store a decade earlier, Apple came up with a solution that was forward thinking and gave customers convenience and value for adapting their new technology while still giving the existing competitors and easy way to adopt the new technological paradigms and still profit.  

I’m pleased to say that as an immediate adaptor of ApplePay in the Midwest, adoption of ApplePay has been ever-growing and is available at most retailers I visit.  I only see it on a few places on the Web but I expect it to grow their at a similar but slightly slower rate since the advantage of using ApplePay on the web isn’t as immediately obvious as it is in a store where it clearly beats pulling out a physical card and using those dreadful chip readers. 

fastasleep

Bart Y said:

IMO, because ebay had owned and created PayPal, even after they became separate companies, they still have a very cozy and integrated relationship.  PayPal knows if ebay allows other electronic payment systems or direct electronic bank access like Zelle, it would lose out on fee big time, IMO that’s why there is feet dragging at ebay.

eBay did not create PayPal.

Bart Y

fastasleep said:

Bart Y said:

IMO, because ebay had owned and created PayPal, even after they became separate companies, they still have a very cozy and integrated relationship.  PayPal knows if ebay allows other electronic payment systems or direct electronic bank access like Zelle, it would lose out on fee big time, IMO that’s why there is feet dragging at ebay.

eBay did not create PayPal.

I stand corrected, in reviewing PayPal’s history, I had forgotten that Ebay purchased then soon after their IPO and has them from 2002-2014 and I never knew Musk and Thiel were involved in the company development.  Amazing that a few of the early people left not believing in the future of electronic payments.

seltzdesign

"Starting in 2016, Swiss banks slowly started moving away from "Twint," their home-grown mobile payment system of choice, and allowed Apple Pay for their customers."

That is not quite correct. You could argue that Twint is much more popular now than in 2016, just not as a direct apple pay competitor. It has become the de-facto standard for C2C money transfer. It has also made a niche for itself in rural areas where you might have a little shop that doesn't normally accept cards, but can accept twint, since you dont need any technical equipment. There are little unattended farm shops where you can pay using Twint by just scanning a QR code. Its also really popular for sites like Ricardo (the eBay of Switzerland) or Tutti (the Craigslist of Switzerland). So its definitely used a lot, just not quite in the same scenarios as Apple Pay, which is basically everywhere else. Even before Apple Pay launched pretty much all payment terminals were NFC payment ready and worked from the get go. Also still hardly any of the big Banks in Switzerland have Apple Pay. Mostly it is credit card companies that offer it (Cornercard, Supercard). Most people I know here just get a Revolut card for free and use Apple Pay with that.

melgross

Bart Y said:

IMO, because ebay had owned and created PayPal, even after they became separate companies, they still have a very cozy and integrated relationship.  PayPal knows if ebay allows other electronic payment systems or direct electronic bank access like Zelle, it would lose out on fee big time, IMO that’s why there is feet dragging at ebay.


Ah, this isn’t working correctly.

this is my reply. eBay did not create PayPal. That was Elon Musk’s first real company. He and others created PayPal. When it was first used on eBay it wasn’t official, and we were still using certified checks, postal money orders, etc. it took a good two years before it became official, and some time before eBay bought it. Then, eBay sold it, and today, again, it’s completely independent.

slowly, I’m seeing other methods of payment, and finally from three days ago, I was offered Apple Pay in the “other” method of payment again. So while eBay was really slow with this, they’re finally speeding it up, apparently, since I first used it sometime last year there.

fastasleep

melgross said:

this is my reply. eBay did not create PayPal. That was Elon Musk’s first real company. He and others created PayPal. When it was first used on eBay it wasn’t official, and we were still using certified checks, postal money orders, etc. it took a good two years before it became official, and some time before eBay bought it. Then, eBay sold it, and today, again, it’s completely independent.

That's not quite right, Confinity created PayPal, and X.com which was created by Musk later merged with Confinity, and their parent company was renamed from X.com to PayPal.

melgross

fastasleep said:

melgross said:

this is my reply. eBay did not create PayPal. That was Elon Musk’s first real company. He and others created PayPal. When it was first used on eBay it wasn’t official, and we were still using certified checks, postal money orders, etc. it took a good two years before it became official, and some time before eBay bought it. Then, eBay sold it, and today, again, it’s completely independent.

That's not quite right, Confinity created PayPal, and X.com which was created by Musk later merged with Confinity, and their parent company was renamed from X.com to PayPal.

Ok, but it was going nowhere before Musk and Theil got involved.

fastasleep

melgross said:

fastasleep said:

melgross said:

this is my reply. eBay did not create PayPal. That was Elon Musk’s first real company. He and others created PayPal. When it was first used on eBay it wasn’t official, and we were still using certified checks, postal money orders, etc. it took a good two years before it became official, and some time before eBay bought it. Then, eBay sold it, and today, again, it’s completely independent.

That's not quite right, Confinity created PayPal, and X.com which was created by Musk later merged with Confinity, and their parent company was renamed from X.com to PayPal.

Ok, but it was going nowhere before Musk and Theil got involved.

Well, that's not quite accurate either since Thiel was a founder of Cofinity before PayPal existed. After merging, Musk decided that X.com would focus on PayPal and was later replaced by Thiel as CEO of X.com, which later was renamed PayPal and went public the following year.  Just being pedantic.

melgross

fastasleep said:

melgross said:

fastasleep said:

melgross said:

this is my reply. eBay did not create PayPal. That was Elon Musk’s first real company. He and others created PayPal. When it was first used on eBay it wasn’t official, and we were still using certified checks, postal money orders, etc. it took a good two years before it became official, and some time before eBay bought it. Then, eBay sold it, and today, again, it’s completely independent.

That's not quite right, Confinity created PayPal, and X.com which was created by Musk later merged with Confinity, and their parent company was renamed from X.com to PayPal.

Ok, but it was going nowhere before Musk and Theil got involved.

Well, that's not quite accurate either since Thiel was a founder of Cofinity before PayPal existed. After merging, Musk decided that X.com would focus on PayPal and was later replaced by Thiel as CEO of X.com, which later was renamed PayPal and went public the following year.  Just being pedantic.

Yes, you are. Mush is considered to be the one who got The Who.e thing working.