Matt Richman:
With Apple Pay, Apple leveraged its business model, cultural influence, and customer base to enter arguably the most heavily-regulated international system on Earth in a way that everyone already in the system had a reason to like. This is an incredible accomplishment, and no other company could have done it.
Matt makes a great point, one often made by many others, that Apple will and can succeed because of its tight control and integration of both hardware and software.
Let’s not kid ourselves, I doubt we’ll ever see Apple Pay anywhere near 10% of U.S. credit card transactions, and even if we did $585 million a year is chump change to Apple. That being said, the press buzz and the “mind share” Apple Pay brings is pure marketing fodder for Phil “the thrill” Schiller. It’s undoubtedly a success, most business would kill to make $585 million a year, but when you make the iPhone, it’s not overly impressive.
I beg to differ.
Apple Pay helps to contribute to Apple’s overall profitability and not a comparison of value.
It is like iTunes which helps to sell the iPods.
Feel free to disagree, but do you REALLY think any meaningful number of people are buying an iPhone just for ApplePay? Or even as a top 3 reason? It may be a nice bonus, but as a differentiating feature I’d say it ranks lower than TouchID. SRSLY, while Apple Pay adds some shopping convenience, the security pluses are almost exclusively for retailers and issuers. Undoubtedly iTunes certainly helped sell iPods, but it did so pretty close to revenue neutral, and quite quickly at that. Over the last several years, iTunes has been a profit center, and marketing sledgehammer (cf Beyoncé’s iTunes exclusive).
i bought it for AP, but realize im not in the general target market. but when people ask me which phone to get i mention it because i feel the feature does add value. with AP i dont have to worry about Target/Home Depot data breaches. i dont have to get new credit cards or change all my passwords, etc. less hassle for me as a consumer. that adds value.
It’s a significant improvement, but it’s evolutionary, not revolutionary, and doesn’t really change how payments work, and the decades-old infrastructure. That’s why established interests like it. Bitcoin, or similar tech is the real change coming, especially outside of the US.
I’ll wait patiently to see how long that takes.
I don’t think Apple Pay is about profits. I think it’s about raising standards for ease-of-use and security.
Perhaps it is just your opinion and what I stated is mine overall it is the experience these features give to the users which enhance the value of the product.
Yes in time to come people will buy the iPhones to use Apple Pay.
iTunes help Apple to sell more iPods which Apple make lots of money and that is what Apple is aiming at and not the value derived from iTunes. Jobs stated they don’t make much from iTunes then.
«matthewmaurice» I’m afraid you are been fooled by your own blindness, Apple is a Global player not a local one; and like it did with iTunes in its day, an apparently simple movement made it overnight the world largest music retailer. Peanuts for Apple in term of cash for but a extremely wise movement for a company that doesn’t sell devices but holistic experiences.
Apple’ll be easily become the single largest credit card processor in the world, and you may wonder what for… It won’t sell directly more devices; if you are the largest and the best (kind of what happened with iTunes) you’ll get change the rules of the game… Transactions settled in today cash or by other means of payments, tomorrow will be handled by Apple Pay (remember Apple never called it system credit pay). The amount of transactions good and services consumed everyday is enormous thatActually