Sad that you insist on paying a 3% tithe to the payment processor companies instead of bothering to carry a few pieces of paper around. This hurts your local, small businesses.
It's not the carrying of the paper that's the problem.
I have to know beforehand how much I'll need, and keep that separate from the rest of my funds. This means that I can't use it for anything that would normally come directly out of my account, and can only be used for in-person transactions.
Why would it be a loss, then? People using Apple Pay were probably paying with a card previously, not cash. Transaction fees remain the same, POS remains the same if it already supported RFID cards, interface remains the same.
Why would any of that be different? As I understood it, from the point of view of the retailer it's no different than a (contactless) card. So sure, she might have to update her POS, but is going to have to do that anyway. So no different gadget, no different training, maybe another processer but maybe what she's already using?
My understanding was the chip and pin / EMV is coming for all merchants in the US pretty soon, regardless of what they think of it. If your forced into making that change, supporting apple pay isn't anything much additional. Of course I could be wrong about that.
The only banks that have seen higher fraud are those who treated entering your credit card into your phone as a "card present" interaction. All banks who treated it as a "card not present" interaction have seen lowered rates of fraud.
"An industry consultant, Cherian Abraham, put the fraud rate at 6 percent, compared with a traditional credit card fraud rate that is relatively minuscule, 10 cents for every $100 spent. Mr. Abraham wrote in a blog post, one of the first to spotlight the issue, that the Apple Pay fraud “is growing like a weed, and the bank is unable to tell friend from foe. No one is bold enough to call the emperor naked.”"
"The vulnerability in Apple Pay is in the way that it — and card issuers — “onboard” new credit cards into the system. Because Apple wanted its system to have the simplicity for which it has become famous and wanted to make the sign-up process “frictionless,” the company required little beyond basic credit card information about a user. Nor did it provide much information to the banks, like full phone numbers and addresses, that might help them detect fraud early."
Don't have a citation handy but I have read that some banks would authorize cards for Apple Pay without any decent authentication.
So thieves that had stolen credit card numbers elsewhere registered those cards on their Apple Pay devices and then used those to charge them.
The credit card numbers had already been stolen, but Apple Pay was used to buy things on those accounts.
There is not - that I have ever seen - any indication that Apple Pay has been hacked.
The real fight here is not about Apple at all. It's about banks (who want a new secure standard) vs merchants (who want to maintain their tracking abilities and maybe get out from under the 2% fees).
* Customers have an easier, securer way to pay than chip & PIN (swipe only will be phased out as it has in Europe)
* VISA/MC/AMEX get a reduction in transaction fraud due to device-linkage (combined with biometrics).
* Retailers can process transactions quicker without them costing more.