The whole advantage of Apple getting into payments is the fact that they have millions of credit cards for their customers. The advantage is muted if they require those customers to get new cards. It is quite safe to assume they are working to partner with all of the major credit card companies and AMEX happens to be one of them.

Chicken or the Egg... which comes first? That's one problem. Must support it in the phone (or wearable) before you can use it at the store... must support it at the store before it's worth supporting on the phone...

The second issue is fragmentation. Look at wireless charging. Two separate solutions. What works at McDonald's won't work at Starbucks (and vice versa). Although both support wireless charging, they support different models. http://www.androidauthority.com/qi-a4wp-wireless-charging-st...

What use is a wireless payment service going to be if 90% of phones can't use it? When there is a competing standard?

>> "An Amex card is no harder to get than a MC/Visa."

Do Amex do a debit card? In Europe (certainly in the UK) debit cards are in much wider use than credit cards and Visa and Mastercard debit cards are given with almost every bank account.

They do a particularly weird instrument called a "charge card." It's not a debit card because it's not pulling straight from a checking account, but there's no long-term line of credit either. It's like a credit card that you're actually required to pay in full every month. So no different from responsible credit card use, but still not credit.

> They do a particularly weird instrument called a "charge card."

It should be noted that they also offer regular credit cards, in addition to the charge card, and these do not require payment in full at the end of the bill cycle.

And prepaid cards too, iirc, through Walmart.

Edit: ignore me, I see somebody else has already mentioned this further down...

The benefit of the charge card (Disclaimer: I have an Amex charge card) is that you can have an extremely large line of credit for those 21-30 days. It's less for balancing your finances and more for spend management (they have great tools to see where all of the money is going, very nice management for multiple family/corp cards, etc).

I'd still trade the charge card for their Costco version.

it's credit if you don't pay it immediately. the lending institution is extending you a line of credit for one month.

True, but AFAK with Amex there is no "lending institution." You get the card from American Express itself and it does not involve a relationship with a bank.

Yes, they do (it depends on the issuing bank, though.) I guess technically it's just a credit card with zero credit limit so you have to have some money in the account.

I believe the AMEX SERVE card is relatively easy to obtain

https://www.serve.com

A lot of places in Sweden don't take Amex, but do Visa/Mastercard

Percentage Fees charged for AmEx in Europe are 100-300% higher for small mom&pop stores, than for Visa/MC. Talked to my local bakery about it recently. They would be charged 5.5% of the bill if the customer used AmEx, but 2% if the customer used Visa.

Ditto in Germany and other EU countries.

The places where I can't use my American Express have been almost non-existent. One or two mom and pop restaurants were Visa only, but that is about it.

Almost all of my monthly spending is on my American Express.

Agreed, I make almost all my purchases with my Amex card (mostly because of unlimited 2% cash back on everything). It's usually smaller independent restaurants that don't take American Express. It's something that I never really understood, because American Express in my experience charges lower transaction fees than Visa/Mastercard. When I had an Amex merchant account they charged a flat $7/month fee with no per-transaction fees, though our volume wasn't very high.

However, you have to setup the American Express account separately, which probably has a lot to do with why many mom and pop type restaurants don't take it. But now that a lot of new restaurants seem to be using processors like Square, this is a complete non-issue.

Yes, Square is definitely helping solve some of the issues for places like that.

I shop at farmers markets quite a bit, and a lot of the merchants there are using Square, and it is awesome =)

That's not my experience. I have to use an Amex card for work to make IT purchases all the time and I'd say a good 25 to 30% of the places I try to use Amex at don't except it.

I am a normal consumer, I have never used American Express for business purposes. 25 - 30% seems really high though, considering American Express used to be targeted mainly towards business users...

I've found several SaaS sites that only take Visa and Mastercard, but not Discover or American Express.

Probably not harder to get, but less popular for sure. They aren't accepted some places that Visa/MC is.