When Apple jumped into the payment processing with ApplePay, I thought this would be a great leg up for Apple. But who will be the winner and who will be the loser? Granted the payment switches from the credit card to ApplePay which indirectly pays for the purchase, who cares as long as we can charge on the card we want, right? Also what is the market share of Apple Pay going to be? Before we answer all those questions, let’s take a look at how we pay today for services and goods.
Cash may still be the king, that may very well be the last one to die, but what everyone is after is the middle class market which is fast adapting to credit cards and now to smart phones based services, dwindling check usage tells you so. With many ways of shopping using credit cards, store cards, pre-paid cards, Paypal, Internet (billpay, bitcoin?), the convenience I see is carrying less or no cards at all. I seldom carry my store cards, especially when they can look it up.
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Apple pay will be convenient, and may help get rid of the cards altogether, if it is accepted by majority of the merchants. Discover has to go through hurdles before it got accepted, so I don’t see myself getting rid of the cards in the near future, although cards may disappear before cash does.
I read the news that many major merchants have signed up with Apple and I thought, what happens to the data? Who will be owning the granular consumer spend information? Before I could finish the blog I heard the news 2 major retailers pulled out of Apple. Ha, they realized it, the data is more valuable than the technology or convenience to customers. Imagine the data movement and explosion even if Apple shares the detailed information to each of the parties involved.
Apple is expected to have around 34 Million customers with an average of 200 transaction per customer it is going to explode. You can do the math, if this information has to be shared with 2- 5 parties. No wonder some retailers are wary of signing up. I won’t be surprised if each one of the financial institutions / retailers come up with their own App for payment mechanism.
In the end having the customer spend data is more valuable for the business operations, customer excellence etc. Having the right Information Governance to manage this Information asset is not only strategic but also a matter of survival to the enterprise.
