One of the things that came out of Apple’s Earnings call which gave investors and the press insight on how Apple made piles of money was the fact that Apple Pay is finally coming to Canada. But the launch vehicle for Apple’s payment system is going to be American Express and not any of Canada’s six major banks.
Now this seems really weird as the American Express isn’t accepted everywhere due to the fact that the fees that they charge merchants are high compared to Visa and MasterCard. Because of that, not many people actually have an American Express card. So this seems like a #fail for me.
The question is, why would Apple go this route as they surely know all of the above?
My guess is this: The word on the street is that Apple has been in talks with the six major banks for a while now and they haven’t yet yielded the results that Apple has been looking for. This despite the fact that TD Canada Trust kind of leaked the fact that they are going to be on the Apple Pay bandwagon. So I am guessing that Apple has decided to force the issue by teaming up with American Express so that it give the the big six banks a push get on board.
Interesting plan. But it won’t work in my opinion. At least not at present. The big six banks in Canada aren’t known for being the sort to be pushed around by anyone. Apple included. Plus some of them are already working on payment systems of their own. Suretap is an example of that. And those efforts aren’t going to be abandoned even if they don’t have broad acceptance as far as I am aware. But I will also point out that those efforts leave out iPhone users. So at some point, the banks will have to play nice with those with iDevices. But I don’t think this will be the catalyst to do that. At least not yet. Apple may want rethink this and they may want to try and work with the big six Canadian banks to roll this out in a way that generates broad acceptance. Otherwise, they might find that Apple Pay will become something that Canadian consumers ignore.
Related
This entry was posted on October 29, 2015 at 10:13 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple, Canada. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Apple Pay Coming To Canada….. Sort Of
One of the things that came out of Apple’s Earnings call which gave investors and the press insight on how Apple made piles of money was the fact that Apple Pay is finally coming to Canada. But the launch vehicle for Apple’s payment system is going to be American Express and not any of Canada’s six major banks.
Now this seems really weird as the American Express isn’t accepted everywhere due to the fact that the fees that they charge merchants are high compared to Visa and MasterCard. Because of that, not many people actually have an American Express card. So this seems like a #fail for me.
The question is, why would Apple go this route as they surely know all of the above?
My guess is this: The word on the street is that Apple has been in talks with the six major banks for a while now and they haven’t yet yielded the results that Apple has been looking for. This despite the fact that TD Canada Trust kind of leaked the fact that they are going to be on the Apple Pay bandwagon. So I am guessing that Apple has decided to force the issue by teaming up with American Express so that it give the the big six banks a push get on board.
Interesting plan. But it won’t work in my opinion. At least not at present. The big six banks in Canada aren’t known for being the sort to be pushed around by anyone. Apple included. Plus some of them are already working on payment systems of their own. Suretap is an example of that. And those efforts aren’t going to be abandoned even if they don’t have broad acceptance as far as I am aware. But I will also point out that those efforts leave out iPhone users. So at some point, the banks will have to play nice with those with iDevices. But I don’t think this will be the catalyst to do that. At least not yet. Apple may want rethink this and they may want to try and work with the big six Canadian banks to roll this out in a way that generates broad acceptance. Otherwise, they might find that Apple Pay will become something that Canadian consumers ignore.
Share this:
Like this:
Related
This entry was posted on October 29, 2015 at 10:13 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple, Canada. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.