Survey of retailers on Apple Pay


Reuters did an interesting piece on retailers and Apple Pay:

The top reasons retailers cited for not accepting Apple Pay were insufficient customer demand, a lack of access to data generated in Apple Pay transactions and the cost of technology to facilitate the payments. Some merchants said they were holding out because they plan to participate in a new mobile payment system to be launched by a coalition of retailers later this year.

I'm not sure what to make of the excuse of insufficient demand. That could be said of mobile payments in general, so there's probably truth to that. However, if you're not offering Apple Pay, I'd be curious how they're gathering that data. If they're just relying on customers complaining and those complaints making it pass the register operator, I doubt that lack of negative feedback is good data.

The rest makes sense. Apple Pay is heavily consumer friendly and knowing your customers is a big piece of the puzzle for retailers. Still, retailers could utilize a their own loyalty program separate of payment and not rely on credit card numbers to know their customers, which probably isn't the best idea anyway. Lastly, the issue of cost I'd assume means buying updated terminals, which likely will need replacing some day anyway so that would just be a matter of time.

I'm a little surprised at how much I like Apple Pay. It's still probably a novelty, but it's pretty cool. Moving it to the Apple Watch makes it just that much better.