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Apple unveils contactless payments via Tap to Pay on iPhone

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Re: Apple unveils contactless payments via Tap to Pay on iPhone

#231

Post by sithadmin »

tut-urut-utut wrote: post #85
sabjut wrote: post #14

Clarification due to a somewhat confusing title: This is about the merchant using an iPhone to accept credit cards and other Tap to Pay devices. The customer was able to pay with Tap to Pay with their iPhone for a while now.

I honestly don't see what's so revolutionary about this. Why would anyone shell out multiple hundreds of € when a device that accepts payments can be purchased for a fraction of the iPhone price? E.g the most expensive device here [1] is only 120 €, and it can also print the bill. The cheapest that does the job is a mere 20 €.

American merchants doing low customer volume (e.g. small shop, cafe, restaurant) are usually locked into using something like a terminal from First Data (~$150-200 USD minimum for the most basic device) and something in the ballpark of 2.2% to 2.7% in fees for every transaction. People paying the lower rate are doing over $50k per month in transaction volume.

Compare that to competitors in the space like Square, which costs ~$300 USD and charges ~2.6% plus a flat 10 cents per transaction.

If you're not doing over $50k in volume per month and already have an iPhone...you might as well just use the Square app and take NFC payments on your phone instead of investing in the reader (assuming you're operating in a space where consumers will readily have NFC payments ready).

Re: Apple unveils contactless payments via Tap to Pay on iPhone

#232

Post by rustyminnow »

profmonocle wrote: post #209
melling wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The long slow road to contactless payments. Almost 2 decades along in the technology adoption curve. I was ready for this in 2005. https://money.howstuffworks.com/personal-finance/debt-manage... If course as the article points out, it wasn’t even new technology back then: “ Not Exactly New Tech Mobile introduced the Speedpass in 1997. Speedpass is a small device on a keychain (called a fob) that users wave in front o…

Something I was thinking about the other day is how some modern credit cards technically have four different ways to pay. Swiping pressure-sensitive paper over the raised numbers (the original method) is still possible, though I haven't seen a merchant actually do this since maybe the mid-2000's. Then you have magstripe, chip, and RFID all in the same card. Pretty impressive backwards compatibility, although I think…

I had my card taken that way five-ish years ago. It was on a ferry where presumably there wasn't enough service to use a digital reader. Or maybe the system was just down. I never knew that was an option until then!

Re: Apple unveils contactless payments via Tap to Pay on iPhone

#233

Post by lkschubert8 »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #224

Hacker News is such a bizarre place. On the one hand, we have threads about how browsers are fingerprintable and some app is using telemetry and endless discussions on theoretical zero-knowledge protocols and the importance of cryptography and Snowden saying this and that that get voted up to the top. On the other hand, something like this comes up which is basically another step along the "no-one accepts cash" funne…

The obvious answer is that the responders are two distinct subsets of hn users.

Re: Apple unveils contactless payments via Tap to Pay on iPhone

#234

Post by izzydata »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #224

Hacker News is such a bizarre place. On the one hand, we have threads about how browsers are fingerprintable and some app is using telemetry and endless discussions on theoretical zero-knowledge protocols and the importance of cryptography and Snowden saying this and that that get voted up to the top. On the other hand, something like this comes up which is basically another step along the "no-one accepts cash" funne…

I don't think it is a reflection of peoples opinions on things. If it is tech news then someone will post it.

Re: Apple unveils contactless payments via Tap to Pay on iPhone

#235

Post by Blindnoplan »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #224

Hacker News is such a bizarre place. On the one hand, we have threads about how browsers are fingerprintable and some app is using telemetry and endless discussions on theoretical zero-knowledge protocols and the importance of cryptography and Snowden saying this and that that get voted up to the top. On the other hand, something like this comes up which is basically another step along the "no-one accepts cash" funne…

Most people dont care enough, even on here I would assume, to be bothered by their data being out there and honestly same for me. Cash is annoying to handle a lot less sanitary than just holding your phone next to the merchants.

Re: Apple unveils contactless payments via Tap to Pay on iPhone

#236

Post by jbverschoor »

numpad0 wrote: post #194
tut-urut-utut wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't see what's so revolutionary about this. Why would anyone shell out multiple hundreds of € when a device that accepts payments can be purchased for a fraction of the iPhone price? E.g the most expensive device here [1] is only 120 €, and it can also print the bill. The cheapest that does the job is a mere 20 €.

€120 for a CC processing terminal with the fees for setup? Doubt it. That’s the price of that little printer alone. Else they’ll be paying them back in processing fees.

Sumit, and others..

Re: Apple unveils contactless payments via Tap to Pay on iPhone

#237

Post by runeks »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #224

Hacker News is such a bizarre place. On the one hand, we have threads about how browsers are fingerprintable and some app is using telemetry and endless discussions on theoretical zero-knowledge protocols and the importance of cryptography and Snowden saying this and that that get voted up to the top. On the other hand, something like this comes up which is basically another step along the "no-one accepts cash" funne…

It's almost as if the people who upvote stuff differ in opinion on what is valuable and/or interesting

Re: Apple unveils contactless payments via Tap to Pay on iPhone

#238

Post by soheil »

yuuu wrote: post #67
TIPSIO wrote: post #47

I would really like to see it become normal for tipping people this way (that isn't at a cash register / tap) but with AirDrop. For example, I recently had movers. I went out of my way to get a cash tip for them earlier. It would have been nice to skip that and just ping it at them somehow without awkwardly saying "Hey friend do you have Venmo? Apple Pay? CashApp? I'd like to tip you. What's your phone number?! Let m…

I had movers a couple months ago and tried to tip them. Note that I don't ever carry cash and am a proponent of abolishing the Federal Reserve. I asked them for their Ethereum or Bitcoin address, and they said, "neither of us don't have that, but we take cash." I calmly tried to explain to them the evils of the Federal Reserve for around five minutes, then began to set them up with their own cryptocurrency wallets on…

So how does not carrying cash equate to getting rid of the Fed? You know it's not the money printed on paper that matters, but the actual number in a database?

Let's not turn hn into a discord channel about how crypto is going to disrupt all the things and make them more "decentralized" by having "federated exchanges" that allow you to "stake" your assets where, otherwise, it would be impossible to form a "liquidity provider" since, of course, without it why would you even want to live.

Re: Apple unveils contactless payments via Tap to Pay on iPhone

#239

Post by runeks »

pilsetnieks wrote: post #207
tiffanyh wrote: post #86

This is the outcome of Apple's 2020 acquisition of Mobeewave. https://www.pymnts.com/apple/2020/apple-buys-mobeewave-for-1... It essentially turns an iOS device into a POS system. Apple already gets 15 bps for all Apple Pay transactions. I'm curious to hear the additional monetization Apple plans to get for this.

> Apple already gets 15 bps for all Apple Pay transactions Bits per second? Beets per sale? Blackened pieces-of-eight per scurvy-rat?

Beets per sale

Re: Apple unveils contactless payments via Tap to Pay on iPhone

#240

Post by frb »

dagmx wrote: post #208
frb wrote: post #195

> Apple will work closely with leading payment platforms and app developers across the payments and commerce industry to offer Tap to Pay on iPhone to millions of merchants in the US. Is it just me feeling that Apple is again playing gatekeeper to iPhone APIs and hindering true competition by "working with leading platforms" aka. the big players, like Stripe or PayPal, essentially leaving startups and smaller players…

They do that when they're concerned about bad actors or want to prove out the API first with a controlled set of people who are willing to experience breakage

Isn't that what the AppStore review process is for?

Or why not provide an extra approval process for the NFC API?

On the other hand they were not so concerned with bad actors when releasing AirTags.

Feels more that it's about control than safety and like that kind of decision that got them into all the antitrust probes in the first place.

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