Review: Apple Pay in Action. If there ever comes a day I can ditch my wallet and use my phone to pay for everything, Ill look back to my first purchase through Apple Pay: a Big Mac and medium fries for $5.44. That wallet-free day wont be coming for a while, if ever, but Apples new payments system brings us much closer. There were a few unexpected steps setting up Apple Pay on Monday, and the employee at a local McDonalds looked befuddled as I stood there after waving an iPhone 6 over the wireless reader in front of the cash register. The transaction hadnt gone through, so she was waiting for me to pay. I thought I had, but I had pressed the phones fingerprint ID sensor too hard, getting me out of the transaction instead of authorizing it. Apple Pay will take getting used to — for consumers and merchants alike. These arent insurmountable hurdles. The biggest difficulty is general acceptance, and Apple has managed to boost interest in mobile payments in a way Google and other rivals havent been able to for years. ——— EASY TO SET UP Apple Inc. has the advantage of having millions of credit cards on file for its iTunes and app stores. Getting started was a matter of going to the Passbook app or Passbook & Apple Pay in the phones settings. After choosing the option to add a card, I tapped Use Card on File with iTunes. I then entered the three-digit security code from the back of my card. You can have multiple cards on file. You can manually type in the details, but thats boring. Instead, just use the phones camera to scan the card. I tried it with six different cards, and Apple Pay got the number right each time. In a few cases, it got the expiration date, too. The scanning doesnt work as well in dark settings. Unfortunately, the phones flashlight turns off when you try to scan the card with the camera. So wait for good lighting — and know you have to do this just once for each card. Once scanned, the image is deleted, as is your card number. Instead, for increased security, you get a substitute number thats unique to the device. A hacker who gets that number wont be able to use it without physical possession of your phone. One warning: Its possible your card wont work with Apple Pay. Not all banks support it, and even if the bank does, it might exclude some types of cards such as corporate or prepaid accounts. But Apple Pay works with most cards from leading U.S. banks. The broad acceptance is one reason many people believe mobile payment is for real this time. ——— USING IT IN STORES About two dozen retail chains are accepting Apple Pay at launch, and others are planning to do so by the end of the year. I was able to buy lunch at McDonalds on the third attempt. I tapped on the sensor too hard the first time. The second time, I moved the phone away from the reader as I was still authenticating the transaction. The phone told me to bring it closer. All I really needed to do was tap on the fingerprint sensor lightly, while leaving the phone near the reader for about a second or two until the phone vibrates. Thats not a difficult thing to learn. Once I did it right, I got a notification that the transaction went through. I can see a list of recent transactions in the Passbook app. On Monday evening, I paid for dinner at Whole Foods using the phone I already had out for Facebook while waiting in line. Video shows using Apple pay in McDonald: youtube/watch?v=DIbsPvpY7GU
Posted on: Tue, 21 Oct 2014 07:42:03 +0000
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