FBD
10-29-2014, 06:26 PM
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-28/angry-tim-cook-issues-veiled-threat-retailers-shunning-apple-pay
Despite the mainstream media's effusive celebration of ApplePay - despite numerous payment systems and NFC devices alreadt existing and failing to achieve any paradigm shift - it appears Tim Cook has pushed his company into an area of competition he was not full prepared for. Seemingly expecting the world's retailers to embrace the 'unique' payment system, first Wal-Mart & Best Buy, then CVS and now Rite-Aid have all blocked ApplePay. While proclaiming the success of signing up over a million credit card users in the first 72 hours, Cook seemed ticked off at the retailers who blocked him, "it's a skirmish," he said, as Reuters reports, jabbing "merchants have different objectives sometimes. But in the long arc of time, you only are relevant as a retailer or merchant if your customers love you."
Apple CEO Tim Cook fired back at CVS and Rite Aid on Monday after the drugstore chains blocked the iPhone maker's mobile payments service, saying there were plenty of other retailers around the world to sign up.
...
Such services, through which a user pays by holding a smartphone close to a specially designed terminal, have failed to catch on in the United States despite the backing of Google and other influential players.
News emerged over the weekend that the two retailers had opted out of Apple Pay in favor of a rival system that roughly 50 chains, including Wal-Mart and Best Buy, are developing for in-house use. "We've got a lot more merchants to sign up, we've got a lot of banks to sign up and we've got the rest of the world," Cook told the Wall Street Journal Digital Live conference, in the company's most extensive comments on the blockade so far.
...
CVS and Rite Aid have not explained their surprise move.
But the driving force behind developing a retailer-owned mobile payment solution is to avoid paying credit card transaction fees to card companies like Visa and Mastercard, analysts said. Fees range between 2 percent and 3 percent of costs per transaction.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-29/day-after-tim-cooks-veiled-threats-applepay-alternative-gets-hacked
Just yesterday Apple's executives went on the offensive against retailers that refused to play by the Cupertino company's rules with veiled threats. So it is ironic at best that today, Wal-Mart's alternate-to-ApplePay mobile payment system - CurrentC - has been hacked. The company explains "within the last 36 hours, we learned unauthorized third parties obtained email addresses of some" of their clients...and "no other information."
Despite the mainstream media's effusive celebration of ApplePay - despite numerous payment systems and NFC devices alreadt existing and failing to achieve any paradigm shift - it appears Tim Cook has pushed his company into an area of competition he was not full prepared for. Seemingly expecting the world's retailers to embrace the 'unique' payment system, first Wal-Mart & Best Buy, then CVS and now Rite-Aid have all blocked ApplePay. While proclaiming the success of signing up over a million credit card users in the first 72 hours, Cook seemed ticked off at the retailers who blocked him, "it's a skirmish," he said, as Reuters reports, jabbing "merchants have different objectives sometimes. But in the long arc of time, you only are relevant as a retailer or merchant if your customers love you."
Apple CEO Tim Cook fired back at CVS and Rite Aid on Monday after the drugstore chains blocked the iPhone maker's mobile payments service, saying there were plenty of other retailers around the world to sign up.
...
Such services, through which a user pays by holding a smartphone close to a specially designed terminal, have failed to catch on in the United States despite the backing of Google and other influential players.
News emerged over the weekend that the two retailers had opted out of Apple Pay in favor of a rival system that roughly 50 chains, including Wal-Mart and Best Buy, are developing for in-house use. "We've got a lot more merchants to sign up, we've got a lot of banks to sign up and we've got the rest of the world," Cook told the Wall Street Journal Digital Live conference, in the company's most extensive comments on the blockade so far.
...
CVS and Rite Aid have not explained their surprise move.
But the driving force behind developing a retailer-owned mobile payment solution is to avoid paying credit card transaction fees to card companies like Visa and Mastercard, analysts said. Fees range between 2 percent and 3 percent of costs per transaction.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-29/day-after-tim-cooks-veiled-threats-applepay-alternative-gets-hacked
Just yesterday Apple's executives went on the offensive against retailers that refused to play by the Cupertino company's rules with veiled threats. So it is ironic at best that today, Wal-Mart's alternate-to-ApplePay mobile payment system - CurrentC - has been hacked. The company explains "within the last 36 hours, we learned unauthorized third parties obtained email addresses of some" of their clients...and "no other information."