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Comment by jjcm | Hacker News Reader

I think a better market to look at for contactless payments is Australia. Over here we use them for everything. Apple pay has just started rolling out and pretty much 95% of places I've shopped/eaten at support it. If you're curious about adoption rate, it's a good case study as there's an existing contactless credit card system already in place.

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"The consumer in the U.K., Australia and Canada is able to use the same form factor everywhere she shops. The contactless card that she taps one place is the same card that she dips at merchants that may not be contactless-enabled. In those places and in those markets, consumers don’t have to put away a contactless card and pull out another form factor to pay for something at a merchant she likes to visit.

Yet, that’s what the consumer is being asked to do in the U.S." [1]

It seems the UK and Australia's concentrated banking/payments sectors (e.g. Barclays drives 40% of British credit and debit spend and has 38% of the British merchant acquirer space [1]) facilitated a fast and coördinated roll-out.

That said, to what degree was Apple Pay designed for in-app, versus meatspace, purchasing? (Irrespective of how it was pitched to JPMorgan and friends.)

[1] http://www.pymnts.com/nfc/2016/uk-lessons-for-us-mobile-paym...

Absolutely. After 3 months of using it I have only withdrawn cash from an ATM twice.

It's slightly amusing to watch the cashier have a moment of confusion as I ask to 'pay by card' then proceed to do nothing whilst I wait for them to get the EFTPOS terminal ready. They expect some kind of shuffling to produce a card instead I extend my wrist out to pay with an Apple Watch.

Can't wait to see what numbers come out from this, interested to know % of Apple Pay transactions on activated cards.

I live in Australia and since we already have contactless payments everywhere I don't understand the benefit/s Apple Pay provides over tapping my card on the terminal. Am I missing something?

Easy budgeting. No need to carry card. If your Visa gets lost, Apple Pay automatically updates to new card without waiting for a physical card. Some of the benefits that I have seen.

No card is the only real benefit.

Contactless payment has been rolled out in many places in Holland over the past year or two, and while that decreases the benefit of using your phone, it's still slightly easier to pull out your phone than to take a card out of a wallet, pay, then put it back in.

For me that would be enough of an improvement to switch.

I keep my card in my phone case, so I just wave my phone over contactless sensor. And even before I wouldn't bother taking it out of the wallet and simply tapped the wallet itself.

Yep. Apple Pay uses a one time authorization code and not your card numbers, etc... The merchant does not get your card number or name. They can only use that authorization code for one transaction. Even if your PIN is stolen, the thief still cannot access your account.

Contactless cards do exactly that. There is no advantage in using Apple Pay

Contactless cards work the same.

The problem is that it's just more fiddly to pay for things using my phone than my card, which makes the use case pretty small (times when I have my phone but not my wallet).

I do like that once I've linked my card to Samsung Pay I get instant transaction notifications whether I actually pay with my phone or with my card though.

It is more fiddly, but it's also considerably more secure. I prefer it for that reason, and intend to disable tap on my cards soon, using them only as chip cards when tap isn't supported.

edit: this is all wrong:

The Australian banks make a lot of money off interchange fees. Apple wants a cut of the interchange fee to get access to Apple Pay (which is what ANZ did recently). This has slowed the Apple Pay rollout, but not because banks don't want to share the fee.

By all accounts, the banks do want to be on Apple Pay, but each bank wants to give Apple the same cut as its competitors do (or at least, not a higher cut). And that's a problem because if they collectively negotiate the same amount, they could be accused of anti-competitive behaviour. They've recently gone to the competition regulator to get permission to negotiate with Apple as a bloc.[1]

[1]http://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-big-australian-banks-a...

You are pretty much totally wrong. Australian banks make much less from interchange fees than their US counterparts. Apple wanted the same fee in Australia as it collects in the US. With interchange fees being smaller in Australia this cut represented a much bigger portion of the total fee. The banks here have also already invested a lot of money and effort in driving contactless payments by issuing all cards with the technology for at least the last few years plus providing the payment terminals. They therefore think Apple is providing less value than in the USA and should thus be entitled to a smaller cut when an Apple Pay transaction happens.

When they banks applied to the competition regulator for permission to collectively bargain with Apple they specifically undertook to negotiate about fees individually. What the banks want to collectively negotiate is access to the NFC hardware on Apple devices so they can provide their own digital wallets and bypass Apple Pay.

Um. Yes. I did actually describe the opposite of what is in the articles didn't I?

In my view the secure enclave and one-time use authorization are the killer things about Apple Pay, not the contactless part. The merchant/cashier doesn't see my name and doesn't have my card number.

Canada will provide better metrics soon enough. Nearly every bank there has rolled out Apple Pay system, and contactless payments are ubiquitous in Canada. Apple Pay is only available for ANZ here, while rest of the banks are rolling out their crappy payment apps.

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