The Payment War continues. Interesting commentary from Brand Channel.
After many decades, it’s still interesting to watch Apple continue to push the envelope around its primary business model.
Apple Watch is a prime example, as it plunges the brand deeply into the fashion world as well as the personal tech sphere that it already dominates. Intriguing new wrinkles include the just-uncovered fact that a loophole in security would hypothetically allow a thief to use someone else’s Apple Watch to make Apple Pay payments with the owner’s credit card data, according to PhoneArena.com.
While the Apple Watch launch may have somewhat overshadowed the company’s Apple Pay platform, the latter’s list of participating vendors keeps expanding—including its newest addition, Cole Haan.
“The Cole Haan enthusiast is on the go and online at all times,” said David Maddocks, chief marketing officer at Cole Haan, in a press release. “The mobile wallet in our popular mobile application made perfect sense for the Cole Haan customer who wants to stay stylish at the touch of a button.”
Las Vegas is getting in on the Apple action as well. Apple Pay is now making its way to The Cosmopolitan hotel and casino there, where consumers will be able to use it at the front desk, restaurants and bars. According to Digital Trends, however, it can’t be used to buy chips for gambling—yet.
All of that may be table stakes, though, compared with Apple’s biggest target for Apple Pay: China.
China is Apple’s second-biggest market by revenues and snaps up more iPhones now than the US, according to CNBC. “We very much want to get Apple Pay in China,” CEO Tim Cook told a Chinese news agency.
The company reportedly is in talks with Alibaba about bringing Apple Pay to China using Alibaba’s Alipay to process transactions. Apple has been eying the China market for some time, according to Zack’s.com, but regulatory hurdles have made it difficult for the company to enter the market.
As with smartphones, Samsung looms as a formidable competitor in mobile-pay systems after its acquisition earlier this year of Massachusetts-based startup LoopPay, according to Recode.net. The price, it was reported, was $250 million.
Will that be enough for Samsung to arm wrestle with Apple Pay as its smartphones have done with iPhones? The answer likely will come quickly.
