Apple Pay in the UK

Posted by: Disposable hero on 15 July 2015

Dears,

 

The Apple Pay facility has now been launched in the UK with some high street banks initially starting to offer the service linked to their bank cards. Some remaining banks will follow this and Barclays appear to have relented and will also offer Apple Pay in the UK at some point.

 

In the USA the Apple Pay has been going for a while. Some will say its nothing worthwhile and just another way of Apple Corp. binding people to their hardware.

 

If you have an associated device, such as an iPhone6 and have now set up Apple Pay in the UK, would you have any feedback to give on user- convenience, ease of setup & operation, technical problems?

 

Cheers

Posted on: 15 July 2015 by Occean

What's interesting is that touch payment cards a lot more widespread in the UK than then US - nearly the norm. I have apple pay setup and it works just fine.

 

But...I am struggling to see the benefit vs a touchless card. When touchless isn't accepted or doesn't work I can use the same card traditionally. With apple pay, I need to find my card. Not sure I would feel confident enough yet to leave the house without my cash card and therefore wallet. 

 

Posted on: 15 July 2015 by Eloise
Originally Posted by Occean:

What's interesting is that touch payment cards a lot more widespread in the UK than then US - nearly the norm. I have apple pay setup and it works just fine.

 

But...I am struggling to see the benefit vs a touchless card. When touchless isn't accepted or doesn't work I can use the same card traditionally. With apple pay, I need to find my card. Not sure I would feel confident enough yet to leave the house without my cash card and therefore wallet. 

 

The main benefit of Apple Pay vs traditional touchless is where the stores choose to install the backend software to their touchless payment devices, there is no charge limit vs the £20 (soon to be £30) limit.  Apple Pay offers a secure authentication also (via the fingerprint reader) which normal touchless card don't offer - I can imagine disabling touchless on the cards (though it appears this isn't actually possible) and using iPhone with the option to get the card out if there are problems.

Posted on: 15 July 2015 by winkyincanada

We have quite a lot of touch-payment here in Canada, but no sign yet of Apple Pay. I am looking forward to it, and imagine it will be my preferred method once it becomes widespread. I like the idea of the easy authentication with the fingerprint reader.

Posted on: 15 July 2015 by Chris G

I went in to a branch of Waitrose today, thought I might try Apple Pay for the first time, but the girl on the cash desk had never heard of it!  I ended up paying CASH - a novel idea which will not, I'm sure, catch on!

Posted on: 15 July 2015 by GregW

I think the biggest benefit of Apple Pay over a standard RFID enabled credit/debit card is that the card number is never transferred to the merchant. Instead Apple Pay passes a 1 time unique code to the NFC reader, making the transaction more secure. This also applies to online merchants using Apple Pay.

Posted on: 16 July 2015 by Chris G

Update on my previous post - used Apple Pay in an Apple Store today (only an interconnect low value purchase).   Unsurprisingly they were able to process it; the assistant who handled the sale said it was her first Apple Pay transaction.  Seemed to go OK.  

Greg: I agree, by not divulging your card number it should be more secure.  Hope so, time will tell.