Plastc goes the way of Coin as Apple Pay takes the lead in digital payments
The digital wallet race just lost another contestant, with Plastc Card entering bankruptcy and announcing to investors that it will shut down without ever delivering the digital payment card. Plastc joins Coin--which threw in the towel in February--in the electronic money pit that Apple has avoided with Apple Pay.
News of Plastc leaving the digital payments market was sent to over 80,000 people who had pre-ordered the vaporware device for around $155 each, who will now be receiving nothing. Details of the notice were published by Gizmodo.
Like Coin, which launched via Kickstarter a year earlier in 2013, Plastc intended to deliver a single digital credit card that could act like a series of other credit cards, loyalty cards and other cards with a magnetic stripe. However, after launching in October 2014 it never got to the point of actually shipping its product.
According to a report by MagnifyMoney, Coin stopped producing cards last summer and sold off its technology to FitBit. It stopped supporting its $50 magstripe device in February.
Plastc was unique in that it planned to connect (via Bluetooth) to a smartphone app to load up to 20 cards. It also expected to support NFC transactions (like Apple Pay) as well as having an EMV chip for Chip-and-Pin use. The card was even supposed to feature an eInk touchscreen for basic interaction.
While attracting attention as a novelty, the limited utility of Coin and Plastc didn't draw enough mass market interest to keep the projects in float. Two other card projects--Stratos and Swyp--also appear to have given up.
Source: MagnifyMoney
After years of secret development, Apple announced Apple Pay alongside the introduction of iPhone 6 in late 2014. It also made Apple Pay a key feature of Apple Watch, which it began selling in early 2015. Apple has also facilitated Apple Pay for payments in apps, and has since added the ability to do iPhone-assisted Apple Pay web transactions on Macs as well.
During its last earnings call, Apple said that global Apple Pay transactions were up 500 percent year-over-year in the December quarter, backed by triple the number of users.
Third party data from Boston Retail Partners announced in February that Apple Pay passed up PayPal to become the most widely accepted mobile payment system among U.S. merchants, reaching 36 percent penetration. PayPal is accepted by 34 percent of merchants, followed by MasterCard PayPass (25 percent), Android Pay (24 percent), Visa Checkout (20 percent), Samsung Pay (18 percent) and Chase Pay (11 percent).
Apple Pay is also officially supported in fourteen other countries, including Australia, Canada, China, France, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the U.K., and the recently added Taiwan.
News of Plastc leaving the digital payments market was sent to over 80,000 people who had pre-ordered the vaporware device for around $155 each, who will now be receiving nothing. Details of the notice were published by Gizmodo.
Like Coin, which launched via Kickstarter a year earlier in 2013, Plastc intended to deliver a single digital credit card that could act like a series of other credit cards, loyalty cards and other cards with a magnetic stripe. However, after launching in October 2014 it never got to the point of actually shipping its product.
According to a report by MagnifyMoney, Coin stopped producing cards last summer and sold off its technology to FitBit. It stopped supporting its $50 magstripe device in February.
Plastc was unique in that it planned to connect (via Bluetooth) to a smartphone app to load up to 20 cards. It also expected to support NFC transactions (like Apple Pay) as well as having an EMV chip for Chip-and-Pin use. The card was even supposed to feature an eInk touchscreen for basic interaction.
While attracting attention as a novelty, the limited utility of Coin and Plastc didn't draw enough mass market interest to keep the projects in float. Two other card projects--Stratos and Swyp--also appear to have given up.
Source: MagnifyMoney
Apple Pay beats digital cards
A bigger problem for these payment cards is that users who want to simplify the number of cards they carry on them can use Apple Pay on their phone, which also works with digital tickets, boarding passes and other passes stored in iOS Wallet. Apple has also built stronger security features into Apple Pay than a physical card can provide.After years of secret development, Apple announced Apple Pay alongside the introduction of iPhone 6 in late 2014. It also made Apple Pay a key feature of Apple Watch, which it began selling in early 2015. Apple has also facilitated Apple Pay for payments in apps, and has since added the ability to do iPhone-assisted Apple Pay web transactions on Macs as well.
During its last earnings call, Apple said that global Apple Pay transactions were up 500 percent year-over-year in the December quarter, backed by triple the number of users.
Third party data from Boston Retail Partners announced in February that Apple Pay passed up PayPal to become the most widely accepted mobile payment system among U.S. merchants, reaching 36 percent penetration. PayPal is accepted by 34 percent of merchants, followed by MasterCard PayPass (25 percent), Android Pay (24 percent), Visa Checkout (20 percent), Samsung Pay (18 percent) and Chase Pay (11 percent).
Apple Pay is also officially supported in fourteen other countries, including Australia, Canada, China, France, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the U.K., and the recently added Taiwan.
Comments
I've been using Apple Pay ever since and am very happy. Hoping that more and more businesses take it, both in person and online. I have the Pay Finders iOS app that shows me all the locations that currently accept Apple Pay.
Okay I do have second but that is the company card I use for travel. Stupid company switched from American express which work with Apple pay to some dumb company who refuses to support Apple pay.
Samsung Pay is the most used at 4.5%, Apple Pay has had decrease in usage over the last few months.
https://www.engadget.com/2017/04/20/mastercard-biometric-fingerprint-card/
Even though it would appear that ApplePay is more secure and reliable that MC's fingerprint tech, the ultimate decider will be the end consumer.
http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/04/20/mastercard-to-add-fingerprint-sensors-to-cards-wont-follow-strict-apple-pay-security-policy
Says nothing about their samples, geographic location. Even their data points are insufficient. Apple Pay has the most and others only have one.
In short no conclusions can be drawn from this.
Furthermore Apple Pay just doesn't appear to be more secure but is more secure than this new finger print enabled Master Card.
With Apple Pay, no one can pick any useful information off your card even with the Wallet app open. No card number, no expiry date, no CVC number. With a plastic card OTOH, all those are readily available.
It's what I answer people who ask me the always silly question: What if I steal your phone?
I would still like for this card to succeed. Although I use apple pay when I can, I still need to rely on credit cards. Swyp also made the promise that gift cards could be loaded into the card, and I do use gift cards quite a bit. So even though there are other options now, I still think there is a market for an all-in-one card. But I'm not holding my breath given how long it's been and I've seen no concrete results in the product.
Of course, we can use ApplePay here in Japan in a number of places, maybe far more locations than in the U.S. For example, at the convenience store like seven-eleven (all of them; a total of about 70,000 convenience stores in Japan), almost all supermarkets/grocery stores, most of department stores, a number of restaurants, retail stores, gas stations in addition to a number of taxi cabs. It's so common.
Boy the has to be the most made up data I ever seen. Giving the fact that apple has signed up far more banks and credit card companies then any other payment system means they are doing more payments than anyone else, how much any one guys but the bank sign up is a known number for both Apple and Samsung.
I don't know the numbers but I can imagine there are far more potential non-Apple Pay users out there than potential Apple Pay users.
The problem is that I just don't know actual figures.
Almost 80%' of all domestic transactions in Spain are in cash.
In some stores I've been in, there's still a training problem. If there's no Apple sticker, I'll ask the clerk if they accept Apple Pay and they either say, "I don't know" or "try it". It usually works. However there's a big drugstore chain that has NFC readers and at first it seems to accept Apple Pay, but the transaction always fails. And restaurants that don't have cashiers don't accept it because they generally don't have a portable wireless terminal. So that means still having to carry a credit or debit card (or cash).
Furthermore, until such time as cash machines use Apple Pay, I still have to carry a wallet with me, although it's a much slimmer wallet than it used to be because I've taken photos of all the membership cards that I don't need to carry physically. I wish there was a way to put those into the Apple Wallet instead of just storing them as photos. The bank I have my credit card with accepts Apple Pay linked to the personal card, but for some strange reason, not on the business card. I'm going to have a get a different business card one of these days.
And I still need to carry a driver's license and my registration. I don't leave the registration in the car because I've had cars stolen in the past. New York State accepts a digital copy of an insurance certificate (although if stopped, I wouldn't want to give my phone to the officer for him to take back to his car), but not license or registration. I tried keeping a separate little ID wallet with just the license and registration by the door and only taking it when I drove, but I consistently forgot it and when I did remember it, I wound up with three things in my pocket: my regular wallet, the ID wallet and my phone, which made no sense. So I think I'll still be carrying a wallet for a long time to come.
And in many retailers, I don't find that the Apple Pay transaction takes any less time than pulling a card out of my wallet and inserting it. Especially when using a debit card, it still asks for a signature, an amount confirmation and whether you want cash back.
For mobile online shopping iOS devices have consistently generated about 5X the sales revenues of Android devices. This has stayed the same for several years according to several companies that track this (like Adobe, Custora and IBM). Add to that iOS accounts for 5X as much revenue for things like digital content and 4X as much revenue for the App Store vs Google Play.
Given this I find it highly unlikely that Android users are anywhere near iPhone users for mobile payments, given that iOS leads in every single metric where money is concerned.
When Samsung Pay was 6 months old they announced they hit $500 million in those 6 months. Sounds impressive until you look at the total number of users and realize the average person spent about $30 per month. Hell, I spend $2,000 a month on Apple Pay, making me as valuable as 66 Samsung Pay users.