10 years of Apple Pay – when Apple became a payment provider | News

In another article, we had just taken a look back at the now ten-year product history of the Apple Watch – first shown at the September 2014 event. However, Apple had made another groundbreaking announcement at the event, which was somewhat overlooked at the time and only revealed itself to be a far-sighted decision quite a while later: With Apple Pay, the company entered a market and laid one of the foundations of the rapid growth that has long been observed in the new services sector.

Although there are no exact figures, market experts assume that around one billion dollars flows to Apple every quarter. The use is free for the customer, but Apple receives a transaction fee of 0.15 percent for credit cards and 0.05 percent for debit cards. This shows why Apple is fighting so hard to be allowed to block or completely block competing offers. However, this will soon be history in both the EU and the USA.

September 2014: A new kind of services
Tim Cook introduced Apple Pay as a “completely new category of services”. The vision is to replace overstuffed wallets with another solution. The first step is to address the issue of “payment”. This involves putting a digital version of your regular credit card in the Apple Wallet, which requires at least an iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus – also one of the topics at the eventful “Wish we Could Say More” event.

It starts at 43:10

Only in the USA…
The service initially launched in the USA, but with very little distribution, as contactless card payments are still a very new topic. Although the credit card is the standard means of payment in the United States, it would take years before the majority of shops and restaurants switched from “swipe” or the even older “imprinters” to chip readers or NFC.

… 2018 also here
The market launch in Germany did not take place until December 2018. If you were a customer of a bank that supported Apple Pay from the start, things looked very good from the start in terms of supported cash register systems. Most supermarkets, gas stations and other sales outlets have long had newer cash register systems.

Most join
Some banks tried to ignore the development or work on a competing product – not only in Germany, where the Sparkasse and Ing DiBa made a loud statement, but also in most countries. In addition, individual chains tried to score points with their own system. The supermarket giant Walmart, for example, is now refusing to accept Apple Pay and only allows it via an app.

Current market leader
Ten years later, Apple Pay is the most popular “digital wallet” in the USA and also in Germany, just ahead of Google Wallet. Contactless payment, whether by NFC card or via a cell phone, has long since become the standard. Apple can be seen as one of the most important triggers of this trend, because Apple Pay brought the topic into the spotlight.