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Retailers desperately do want mobile payments to work, and the catch is that they will only accept 1 or 2 systems. There is only the surface area near tills, only the connectivity, and only the budget for 1 or 2 systems.
For a long time we're going to have places accept just Apple devices... and those retailers are going to have valued customers feel negatively towards the retailer for treating them as 2nd class customers. And this will work in reverse too... Android solutions will emerge very fast, and probably based on the NFC tech that is already proven and that has already rolled out over the past couple of years.
I could be wrong here, but isn't apple pay meant to work with standard contactless readers, as in the ones that are already popping up around the UK to work with the new generation of contactless cards that banks are now issuing? If so thats something that android can already interact with, but it seems to have been held back somewhat in the uk by carriers and banks wanting to control this by making users go through their own apps such as http://explore.ee.co.uk/cashontap. This was meant to get better with host card emulation that was included with kitkat but there seems to have been little said about it in the uk since it introduction. So I could be completely wrong, but in theory android should be able to interact with the same readers that apple pay can do, but the lack of apps to do this through is the main thing holding it back. So in theory apple's influence should hopefully lead to more contactless readers being installed around the uk which is a good thing for pretty much everyone with an nfc enabled phone as soon as the right apps arrive on other platforms
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I could be wrong here, but isn't apple pay meant to work with standard contactless readers, as in the ones that are already popping up around the UK to work with the new generation of contactless cards that banks are now issuing?
No.
https://developer.apple.com/apple-pay/Getting-Started-with-Apple-Pay.pdf
Apple Pay uses a different system based on using tokens as an abstract but trusted representation of the payment method... rather than the payment method itself.
It's a difficult thing to explain, but it's actually more secure as the tokens can be verified and are usually single-use only (the requestee/retailer has to declare the type of token they want).
Anyhow... different system, it's may be compatible with the readers deployed today... but it isn't compatible with the software infrastructure deployed against those readers today.
Velocio
Yes, but Android shipped devices outstrip Apple 5-to-1 in Europe alone, 9-to-1 in Asia, and only 2-1 in the USA.
It really isn't about that though... that's just hype. The numbers are dauntingly large for all players (except Microsoft).
Retailers desperately do want mobile payments to work, and the catch is that they will only accept 1 or 2 systems. There is only the surface area near tills, only the connectivity, and only the budget for 1 or 2 systems.
For a long time we're going to have places accept just Apple devices... and those retailers are going to have valued customers feel negatively towards the retailer for treating them as 2nd class customers. And this will work in reverse too... Android solutions will emerge very fast, and probably based on the NFC tech that is already proven and that has already rolled out over the past couple of years.
Eventually, I predict, we are going to end up with a Visa vs Mastercard thing for mobile payments. A 2 system market for mobile payments, where Android is Visa (accepted everywhere) and Apple is Mastercard (accepted most places). The eventual cost to entry is lower for Android and the market larger, and the global penetration much higher.
Every £1 Apple will make as a payments provider Android will see £2 > £8 in equivalent transaction volumes.
For me it's firmly not a "Apple are awesome, yay!" thing... it's a "mobile payments are coming to the rest of world (outside of Japan), success depends upon seamless integration at point of sale and policy around fraud". Strangely, the tech didn't appear in that sentence... the market is huge, but ultimately the big winner in the market is whomever supplies the most ubiquitous solution to the largest market... Apple will win early because they can move fast to push one solution to all of their users, but Android win long-term as the total market is so much bigger than Apple that even if it's slow to market it will bring a far huger audience and total transaction volume.
2 systems will win, Apple in the early days, Android long-term. And to consumers, we all just got taxed a little more on our transactions as another intermediary just arrived to take a few pennies out of every £1 we spend.