It’s been a little over a year since Apple Pay was first launched, and while many iPhone users love using the new payment system, I’ve given up on it for now.
If you’re not familiar with Apple Pay, it’s essentially Apple’s way of paying for goods in-store or in the shopping apps on your iPhone.
The way it works in the store is that you go to the checkout desk and when it’s time to pay, hold your iPhone near the payment terminal and then put your finger on your iPhone’s Touch ID sensor to confirm the payment. It’s touted as an easy, fast, and secure way to pay for goods in-store, and while the “safe” part of that statement is certainly true, my experience with the other parts isn’t quite so true.
Apple Pay is great in that it protects your real credit card information and doesn’t provide it to the store you pay for, meaning you’re less susceptible to mass credit card store hacks. That alone is a great reason to use Apple Pay. However, the store must accept Apple Pay as a payment option, which many stores still do not accept.
Plus, Apple Pay only has to work in these stores, and so my experience with Apple Pay has been less than ideal.
Apple Pay Store Availability
The number of stores that accept Apple Pay is quite long, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t many stores that don’t have Apple Pay, because the list of stores that don’t accept Apple Pay is also pretty long.
Of course, Apple Pay is only a year old, but that’s still no excuse as NFC-enabled payment platforms have been around for several years. Many stores lag behind in updating their payment systems to accept Apple Pay and other wireless payment options.
The cost of updating their systems may come down, and we don’t blame stores that want to wait for Apple Pay to become a little more mainstream before they start spending money on updating their payment terminals, but Apple Pay may not become more mainstream. until stores become leaders, not followers.
Surprisingly, the only store I go to regularly that accepts Apple Pay is Meijer, a regional grocery chain in the Midwest. My mechanic (who I visit semi-regularly for oil changes and maintenance) also accepts Apple Pay and isn’t one of the massive nationwide chains like Meineke or Jiffy Lube. I’m talking about a mom-and-pop car shop that doesn’t even advertise… and they accept Apple Pay.
These are the only two places I visit regularly that accept Apple Pay, and even then I keep using my debit card because Apple Pay isn’t really any faster. I still have to sign or enter my PIN when I use Apple Pay, which defeats the purpose of being quick and easy to use.
Sometimes I go to Walgreens to get a prescription or pick up some random stuff I need quickly, so you could say there are at least three places I go to on a semi-regular basis, but that’s where the next issue comes in.
Apple Pay Not Working
Aside from too many stores that I frequently visit by owning Apple Pay, there have been enough times that Apple Pay just didn’t work, that I eventually got to a point where I stopped using Apple Pay.
I was in Meijer once and used Apple Pay. The payment terminal said the payment had been made but did not show it completed on the cashier side so I tried again but it was still doing the same thing. I finally broke my debit card and paid in less than 10 seconds.
Another time, I decided to try Apple Pay at Walgreens, but this time I brought one of my best friends who are Android users. I wanted to show him Apple Pay, so when we got to the payment strip I took out my iPhone, placed it next to the payment terminal and nothing happened.
Worse still, the cashier must have been untrained in Apple Pay and didn’t know what the hell I was doing. To him, I looked like a psychopath hovering my iPhone over the payment terminal waiting for something magical to happen. Again, I pulled out my debit card and paid in less than 10 seconds. I then left the store like a complete idiot and my Android friend laughed silently on the way home.
This is by no means Apple’s fault, as it’s often the store’s responsibility to offer Apple Pay and make sure their payment systems work properly for such technology, but how disappointed have I been so far? overtakes stores.
I feel like the world as a whole isn’t ready for a mass NFC payment rollout, not in the sense that stores aren’t updating their systems, on the contrary, people don’t seem really ready for this kind of technology.
Paying for goods using your smartphone is still a very new concept, and while many tech-savvy users are familiar with Apple Pay and the like, I feel like most people still see it as a strange and foreign concept.
Hopefully that changes sooner rather than later, but for now it’s really easier for everyone if you use your credit or debit card.
