Apple CEO Tim Cook at the Wall Street journal technology conference announced that in its first 72 hours, Apple Pay activated 1 million credit and debit cards for its new Apple pay service.
It would seem that Apple Pay is breaking the norm for early adoption uptake in the tech world, normally new systems like this are approached with great caution by new users and slowly gain momentum. Apple Pay is up against offerings from Google, among others, alongside traditional payment methods, you know like actual money.
Paying for goods with your smartphone, considering their now commonplace in the western world, is not a bad idea and a bad idea all in one. Given the amount of us that carry them it makes sense they should also be our wallet, but take into account how many of us also lose them well let’s hope it comes with some good security features to back it up. Apple has the potential with this momentum to quickly dominate the market with its new product.
Obviously no one does anything for free anymore, so what does Apple get from this? Apple will take a 0.15 percent cut of any transactions, that’s 15 pence per £100 spent. Doesn’t seem like a lot but if 1 million people spent one pound apple makes 150 grand, if they spend ten pounds that’s 1.5million. So you can see the potential if the uptake is good for Apple to make horrendous amounts of money for doing very little. If it’s entire smartphone user base starts using it, this could be Apples new big line of income.
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The next obstacle Apple have is to get businesses to accept Apple pay in their stores, many places still haven’t adopted the contactless payment methods and it may be some time before they do.