I'm both eager to see what they do and a bit afraid that their weight will stifle progress in that area (if only because any competing tech will have no chance of being allowed on that platform).

Having a secure way to pay with your phone, without divulging your credit card number to the merchant, without the risk of having your card duplicated or robbed, would be a massive advantage.

However, I'm a bit wary that Apple will be both too greedy and start behaving like a bully, if not toward its customers, at least toward the merchants.

I also don't like Apple's paternalistic attitude toward controlling access to content it deems "mature". Will they prevent me from using their payment system for stuff they do not approve of?

Like with the App store, will merchants have to bow to the mighty Apple and be forced to abide by its many rules -even the unwritten ones- to be allowed on their payment system?

It's doesn't seem like this is physical goods in physical stores, but physical goods in internet stores. So you could have a "Pay with iTunes Account" button at the end of the purchase process, along with the "Pay with Paypal" button.

I'm not entirely sure I see where the profit motivation for Apple is. They can't charge much more than the standard 2.X% that the other processors charge. And only a few tenths of a percent of that is profit. I guess they could force all iOS apps like the Amazon iOS app to use their payment system and charge a higher percentage, but that would cause a lot of ill will and would probably chase companies back to web apps.

If they require you to confirm the purchase with your fingerprint they would likely have lower levels of fraud than raw credit card numbers which would let them undercut the other payment providers. They could make a nice profit charging less than the standard 2.X%.

Apple didn't have any issue with creating ill will because of their policies for ebooks and other digital goods. Should they decide to go that route, I don't think they'll have any issues requiring their payment backend for physical goods as well. And I strongly suspect Apple views chasing companies (that don't want to use their payment system) to web apps as a feature, not a bug.

I used their payments to buy something in the Apple store last week. It really feels like stealing: You walk in, take the product, scan it with your phone, and walk out. If they enable this for other merchants, it would be a huge business.

Yes, they've been using this in Spain for a while in all Apple Stores. There are a few things that make it "not awesome". For example, an employee always had to review my purchases (I wasn't buying anything expensive, less than €100), and one time there was an issue with the payment and it required the intervention of one of the employees as well. But I agree, once it's a "take item, scan it, walk out" and it works flawlessly, it can be a game changer if they apply it to other retail shops.

In the UK, you really can walk in, pick something up, pay on your phone and walk out. No staff intervention necessary.

Granted, all the really high value stuff is out back so perhaps this doesn't scale as well to other retailers.

Yea but how is this fundamentally different from the millions of self-check out aisles at grocery stores around the world? I mean, yes, you use your own phone, fire up an app, scan the item and use your stored credit card. But a self-check out kiosk works similar enough. Scan item and use your own credit card by swiping it.

All the self-service aisle kiosks I've used are horrible machines that scream at you for tiny deviations.

Their UX reminds me of the Onion's video: "Franz Kafka International Named World's Most Alienating Airport":

http://www.theonion.com/video/pragues-franz-kafka-internatio...

I don't understand what's so difficult to use about self-checkout. Once you've used them once or twice, you know how to use them at pretty much any store. I always prefer self-checkout to going up to a cashier. Cashiers are always so slow and take their time. I can get done extremely quickly if I use self-checkout though.

True true!

> If they enable this for other merchants, it would be a huge business.

If they can convince people it doesn't feel like stealing. And I think people are somewhat right to worry... if you screw up the purchase, it's shoplifting. If I go to a clerk, and they screw up, not my problem.

A nice advantage Apple has in this area is their retail stores. They can test (and already are testing) mobile payments in their own stores before rolling it out publicly. One problem they will face is that if it's tied to iPhone they are severely limiting the number of people who can use it and if merchants have to pay for any hardware for their stores they will go with the mobile payment provider with the largest market share.

I think it's probably the best business opportunity facing any of the tech giants right now.

This helps explain why all bitcoin wallet apps are banned from the app store.

Apple Coin?

I for one welcome our new crypto overlords.

Why do they need or would they want their on currency? I could see other companies maybe going down that road but with Apple the goal seems to be to make products as simple to understand as possible. Using USD (or local currency) and charging through a credit card stored in their systems is easy for everyone to understand.