Apple Pay coming to long-time holdout UBS soon
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.
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.
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.
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.Wir freuen uns, Apple Pay bald in unser bestndig wachsendes Angebot an mobilen Zahlungslsungen aufzunehmen. pic.twitter.com/1Q7467MD10
-- UBS Schweiz (@UBSschweiz)
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.
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Same for Apple Watch health apps like heart monitoring and ECG with countries’ Health Departments, although many are quite busy right now.
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.
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.
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.
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.