Apple Pay adoption rate

I use contactless payment with a chase and apple credit card on my Apple watch. The watch is GPS only and I often forget my phone. I suspect there is more going on behind the scenes than just talking to the phone to process payment.

This is not surprising. Your phone/watch does not communicate directly with the bank as a part of processing an ApplePay transaction. It is emulating a contactless credit card.

The merchant’s card reader and connected point-of-sale terminal is what communicates with the bank to process the charge. Your phone/watch receives data from the card reader, prepares the response data (based on data pre-loaded from your bank) and sends the response back to the card reader.

All communication between your phone/watch and the bank, at the time of a purchase, is performed by way of the merchant’s point-of-sale terminal. Direct communication is only performed when you enroll new cards.

1 Like

This is something those of us have experienced who have successfully used Apple Pay when without coverage. I’ve filled up at many gas stations in rather remote areas where I no longer had cell coverage and definitely no wifi. The Apple Pay part worked just fine to pay at the pump.

It’s really nice to know this works, also for people who travel abroad and perhaps don’t have data roaming included with their plan. :+1:

It’s interesting to me that when using either a Tap to Pay card, or ApplePay with my Apple Watch or my iPhone, the transaction is nearly instant. However, with a chip card, the terminal is careful to instruct you to “Do Not Remove Card” and then after a pause of 10-15 seconds, “Please Remove Card”. Why would it take so much longer one way vs. the other?

1 Like

I’ve asked myself this question as well.

A web search doesn’t reveal anything obvious, but I did run across this “Quick Chip” specification from 2017: https://technologypartner.visa.com/Download.aspx?id=526

Without going into all the ugly details, it appears that there are three specifications:

  • The traditional EMV spec
  • A “Quick Chip” spec
  • A “Quick Contactless” spec

It appears that the perception of chip transactions being slow is because the traditional EMV spec includes post-transaction authorization steps. The card must remain inserted while this runs, even though the transaction has completed.

The other two specs don’t include this, so the card doesn’t need to remain in communication after the card sends its data to the terminal. Which means you can remove the card at that point, making the whole process seem faster.

I would assume that chip-based terminals are implementing the traditional EMV protocol and not Quick Chip. As for why, I don’t know. I suspect there are some situations where it is not appropriate. I noticed a footnote on page 5 which reads:

Since chip cards (especially those from European banks) may require PINs for processing, that may explain why point-of-sale terminals don’t seem to be using Quick Chip.

Or my assumptions based on this document may be completely wrong. :slight_smile:

2 Likes

The quick answer is that the standards and protocols for chip-based cards were developed almost half a century ago and rolled out in Europe in the mid- to late-1980’s. Adoption in North America was very slow, but it’s still ancient technology relative to contactless systems.

2 Likes

Indeed, I remember chip & PIN when I first came to Europe in '89, at a time when not only did we here in the States still swipe exclusively, this was the time people here would actually still issue a check for their groceries at the Safeway checkout. :laughing:

To those of you who thought the Coen brothers were joking when they opened TBL with the Dude issuing a check for milk at Ralph’s — well, they weren’t. :joy:

@ace after all the great explanations I’ve seen, suggest you hire @Shamino as writer. :rofl:

But then he’d have to pay him. :grin:

In fact, he has written an article for us. :slight_smile:

3 Likes

FWIW, I have used Apple Pay from the day it was announced. And it has only gotten better, as now almost everywhere I go uses it. I like that I can pay for things even if I don’t have my wallet with me (something I do more often now…as I use my bike to get around). And I especially like using it with my Apple Watch: A quick double-click and I am ready to pay…no need to take my phone out of my pocket. In fact, I don’t even need the phone with me (although I typically carry it).

And with BART here in Bay area, it’s even cooler. With a Clipper transit card installed, you don’t even have to do the double-click. Just put the watch near the sensor and you’re done.

I used the Express Transit Card option for the watch both on a trip to London (barely pre-Covid) and for my Clipper Card in the SF Bay Area. Since I wear my watch on my left wrist and the transit payment detectors are normally on the right, you do need to learn a little dance step to go through the gates at a transit station😁.

Generally true in my experience, but not always. When I’m in a Trader Joe’s and use my tap-to-pay card, I have to hold the card against the POS terminal for a while until it beeps, or the payment won’t work. Of course, Trader Joe’s (although a great store in general) has the slowest POS terminals I’ve ever known.

Great post, Neil.

On the subject of “lies, damned lies, and statistics”… there’s yet another reason why statistics can be so misleading. I never knew about this until I had a long, interesting chat with my former primary care doctor, after telling him that I generally distrust drug “studies”, especially if they’re sponsored by the pharmaceutical companies that stand to benefit from them… and to my surprise, he agreed with me.

He explained to me that, even if the initial study was set up correctly (which it often isn’t), all it generates is a mountain of raw numbers (“data”). Those numbers have to be crunched down into something meaningful by running them through something called a “statistical modeling program”… and there are many competing models, each one of which tends to yield different results. I think I remember him saying that the most common model used was something called the “Framingham Model”… but that the drug companies might actually run the numbers through various different modeling algorithms, and then publish whichever one yields the apparent result they like best.

I assume these statistical shenanigans are used in many other fields as well, such as economics, financial consulting, computer-chip specs, and so on… yet another reason for my status as a hard-core general cynic.

Yeah…the same things happen with pretty much any study or poll. While not universally true…a considerable number of studies that one would think are impartial and unbiased are actually paid for and supervised by either a company, organization, or person with a vested interest in a particular outcome…and it isn’t just political ones at all as a favorable study can result in income or grants or prestige as well. In fact…in my hard core general cynic point of view…that number approaches 100% faulty, particularly for political or policy studies/polls since not only do you get skewed data by how you ask the questions or run the experiments but then the results get twisted into some stated outcome that only faintly resembles either the original question/experiment or what the data actually says.

Interesting. I’ll have to ask my wife if she has the same experience here (So. Cal.). She’s the TJ’s shopper, I’m the Albertsons shopper (regular grocery store, and practically instant Apple Pay authorization). How would you say the delay compares to using a chip-reader terminal?

This is almost certainly not the same delay that people using chip-readers routinely experience.

A delay with a contactless card usually means some problem with the NFC radio link between the card and the reader. It could be a problem with your card or with the reader.

If your card is working fine elsewhere, then it is probably a problem with the reader.

I wonder if this is really a delay, or just people tapping too early and finding themselves having to wait until the reader is ready. Most readers I interact with at checkout desks don’t just accept taps at any time, they are told to read via tap at a certain point in the payment process which of course gets initiated by the clerk through their register.

I can verify that Trader Joe’s terminals are slower with tap to pay the most other terminals. I notice varying time delays between different terminals; Walgreens can be slow, my local supermarket better. My guess is that it’s the terminals.

Since Apple Pay I hardly ever do tap-to-pay with an actual card, but I do at Costco, since I have the card in my hand anyway.

Apple Pay now seems to be available (almost) anywhere including doctors’ offices, gas stations, and even small convenience stores. It’s always a pleasant surprise when I walk into a small mom-and-pop store and find out it takes Apple Pay. I don’t carry my wallet with me anymore when I go shopping.

However, I’ve been told two of the major retailers, Home Depot and Lowe’s, have no plans to accept Apple Pay.