I’ve noticed a number of places in my city switching to cards only, no cash or checks allowed. Although they primarily take debit/credit cards, they also mention they take stuff like Google Pay and Apple Pay. It got me thinking:
–Do you use these mobile payment systems, and which ones? Do you use them instead of credit/debit or alternate with them?
–What are their benefits and drawbacks?
–How hard is it to find merchants to take them? What kind of businesses in general don’t take them?
I use Apple Pay. Where it is accepted it is generally faster for me to get my phone out, double click the side button (in such a way that it recognizes my face), and hold it near the reader than it is to get my credit card out of my wallet. That sounds like a lot of things but it really is one fluid motion for me, and the chipped card typically takes an irritatingly long time to process.
It’s a little spotty still regarding where it is accepted, at least in the US. In Canada and Australia it seemed accepted everywhere.
I use Apple pay. It’s accepted in around 50% of the business I go to.
As noted above, it’s much faster than chip-and-signature.
Some implementations are really brain-damaged, though - they treat it like a credit card, printing a receipt that must be signed. Clearly the NFC driver was just glued onto their existing software.
I use Apple Pay as well as my contactless Capital One card for almost all my small transactions. I prefer using the contactless Capital One cars because it’s got a cash back benefit, but if it’s just something small, I’ll use the Apple Pay since my phone is always in my hand.
It’s been about a year or so, but I tried to use Android pay. It worked 50% of the time. So I always had cash as a backup because who wants to be the fucking twat holding up the line fucking around with some shitty phone payment? Turns out just using cash is a fuckload easier. And after three help inquiries to Google trying to figure out what the fuck the issue was, Google just started to ignore me. Fuck them. Use cash.
Cash sucks. It pretty much is only good for very busy bars and street festivals. Are you sure you were using the phone pay correctly? And you can always get a contactless card as well as a back up.
I have my Amazon Visa card as my payment method with Apple Pay, so I get cash back (or at least Amazon points) whenever I use Apple Pay.
Here’s the thing - it either works or it doesn’t. Half the time it didn’t. I would have my phone, unlocked (PIN entered) and ready to go, and when I tapped the phone to the card reader it returned an error. I would then proceed to pay in cash because again, who wants to be the fuckhead holding up the line. After I completed the transaction, my phone would say it’s ready, but what the fuck, I have paid in cash by then. It needs to work the first time, and it just didn’t half of the time. The way it was supposed to work is: 1)unlock phone, 2) tap to pay, 3) done. The way it actually worked was: 1) unlock phone, 2) tap to pay, 3) wait a few seconds, 4) enter PIN to unlock phone again, 5) tap to pay. Fuck it, if I hit step three cash came out and fuck Android pay. Shit needs to work the first time. Android pay didn’t. Cash doesn’t have that problem. I love cash.
I’m not really familiar with Android pay. But Apple pay is pretty seamless. It certainly isn’t universally accepted, which is annoying. But you can see that before you even try to use it. If it has the appropriate wireless logo I’ve never had any issues with it working first time, every time. That’s more than I can say for the chipped card. I’ll use cash from time to time too but it has a slight premium since I don’t bother carrying coins and end up putting them in the tip jar.
And since I am on a roll, I’ll add that the only thing NFC on a phone was actually useful for was Bluetooth pairing, which was a clusterfuck in itself. In theory, Bluetooth pairing was supposed to be simple, in reality it is shit. An entirely different system (NFC) finally made Bluetooth pairing easy, but in my experience that was the extent of the usefulness of NFC. It’s like crappy patches to fix crappy systems. Crap all the way down.
Did you ever think it was a user issue?
I almost never use cash anymore. In the last 6 months or so I’ve used Apple Pay linked to my credit cards in Estonia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Poland, the US, the UK, and here in Canada. It occasionally need a second tap, but always faster than fumbling in my wallet for bills and waiting for change.
I use Apple Pay, and it is accepted everywhere, because everywhere has a contactless credit machine.
This is my experience in the UK, and recently in Italy.
Apple Pay saved my bacon one day when I did an entire weeks grocery shopping having forgotten my wallet. For that reason alone, I’d set up my phone with one of these options.
I don’t really use it routinely, but I do have a debit card with the Tap feature, and it is definitely better than swipe or chip. However, implementation is still spotty, at best 50% of stores accept it
I love it when it works, but I try to have a backup. I’ve encountered a merchant who refused to allow me to use it (“The last time someone did that, it crashed the machine and we couldn’t take payments for three days until the bank came and fixed it”) and maybe 5% of the time, I’ve had it inexplicably not read.
Apple Pay is the best payment method I have access to. IMHO, Apple Pay > chip card > online electronic payments > swipe card > bartering with chickens etc > cash.
Why do you hate cash so much? I’m more likely to have cash in my pocket than anything else as it’s smaller & lighter than anything else. I don’t run with a phone & some of my running shorts only have a key pocket; bills will fit in there but a card won’t.
I’ll also add that the watches suck unless you use them multiple times in a day/without talking the watch off because the first time you use it you need to enter your PIN. The authentication is that you need to enter your PIN at least every 24 hrs/after taking it off (which it knows by HR being lost from the sensor on the back of the watch).
This was similar to my experience with Apple Pay on my iPhone. I don’t know if it is user error or what but sometimes at the point-of-sale I can get the phone to go into Apple Pay mode and sometimes I cannot. And that last part, sometimes I cannot, is exactly what has hurt adoption of most alternative payment systems like this. Cash or swipe/dip a card works, every time*. A service like Apple Pay must be easier to use than a swipe/dip and it must be dependable - every time. I also do not want to be the fuckhead holding up the line so I reach for my card every time and swipe/dip instead of taking the risk that for this transaction Apple Pay might or might not work for me.
*Yes, I know a EMV chip or mag stripe can get damaged and the swipe/dip may fail. But frankly, that happens to me once every few years and that’s when I know it is time to ask my bank to send me a replacement card. It is less than 50% that my iPhone behaves properly and let’s me get to the Apple Pay screen where I can use the phone to pay.
I have Apple Pay, it seems to work ok but my contactless debit cards live in my phone case anyway so it is quicker and easier to get one out and waft it over the reader than it is to hold my finger just so on the iphone button to unlock it then waft it over the reader. There is also the problem that using the phone means the phone and both physical contactless cards are close to the reader. If and when Garmin make Apple Pay available on their watches I would probably use it all the time.
As for cash, I haven’t used it regularly for decades. We have some to pay the house cleaner and we have some in a jar for the mother-in-law to use to buy groceries (she lives with us, we pay for the groceries, having cash available means she can get milk and bread etc without using her own money).
I use Google Pay frequently, and have found it faster than a chip card. I have to remember one location that won’t give cash back on Google pay, but that is the only hiccup.
Sure, the first time I thought I did something wrong, but the process is pretty simple. 1 - unlock phone; I made sure the phone was unlocked right before the transaction. 2 - tap to pay; I know where the NFC sensor is on my phone, and I can see on the payment terminal where to place the NFC sensor, and I know that the distance has to be quite close. I know the terminal at least sensed the phone as it beeped. But the phone had a message that said the transaction failed. At this point, I resorted to the backup payment method (cash, which for some odd reason always works). Then leaving the store I looked at my phone and saw a screen message prompting me to enter my PIN for Android pay, which was specifically not supposed to be needed when the phone was already unlocked. I couldn’t tell you how long the time lag was between the transaction failed message and the prompt for the PIN because I was busy paying with a reliable payment method. Maybe 10 to 30 seconds? It wasn’t instant. So yeah maybe I made an error in expecting it to work as advertised and not waiting to enter a PIN that I was not expecting to need to enter. But on the times that it did work as advertised, I didn’t need to enter a PIN so there were two distinct experiences here, one were it worked as advertised and the other where it didn’t. 50/50 odds on what it was going to do - work or not work. Google help replied to my first two emails seeking help, but didn’t fix the issue. The last straw was when they didn’t even respond to my third email.
User issue? I don’t know, you tell me why it worked half the time and didn’t the other half when I was doing the same thing every time. And by the way, all these were at the same retail sales location (Walgreens), so that’s one less variable in the process.