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Banks and Credit Unions to Team Up Against Apple Pay Fees

127 points · 133 comments · Brajeshwar

  1. havaloc · · focus · HN ↗
    I get why the banks are not happy, but I can tell them that I am not going to use Chase Wallet, Bank of America Wallet, Citi Wallet...just pay the fee and be thankful for the reduced payment friction, which they invariably make money from. PS: Nobody is going to use Paze (yet another half baked wallet), other than to collect the free $10 to sign up for it.

    Somewhat related, even Walmart relented and now supports Apple Pay/Contactless. Every big merchant has now relented (Kroger, Home Depot, Walmart).

    1. MBCook · · focus · HN ↗
      Remember CurrenC? The thing a bunch of them tried to make that failed horribly during test with no consumers liking it? If I remember a description it involved using an app where you had to scan a QR code, and then the point of sale terminal had to scan a QR code on your phone or something like that.

      It was all so hilariously badly designed compared to tap and pay.

      1. kstrauser · · focus · HN ↗
        I took great joy in watching its downfall. It also only worked with debit cards, meaning you didn’t get the buyer protections you use from buying things on a credit card.

        CurrentC was designed to collect all your transaction info so that its owners could analyze your buying habits. I’m delighted that not-CurrentC won that war.

        (I personally use Apple Pay, but my understanding is that Google Pay has the same privacy advantages for end users. Both of them are light years ahead of the other boondoggle.)

        1. MBCook · · focus · HN ↗
          Yeah, but it meant they didn’t have to pay credit card fees. And isn’t that what’s really the most important thing here? Lol.

          As far as I know, the current Google Pay is identical to Apple Pay: it’s just EMV tap-to-pay. So it would be the same protections. Samsung pay too.

          It was kind of neat that Samsung had that thing for a short while that would somehow trick the magstripe reader in a POS terminal by blasting magnetic fields at it to think that you had swiped your card.

          I think there was a different one before that that was not, but I’m also pretty sure that’s long gone. And I think it was more like Apple Pay on the web, where it was really for paying in a non-card environment. But I’m not an android person, so I’m not sure.

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