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James Martin/CNET
Apple has expanded support for Apple Pay to 10 more merchants.
An update of the Apple Pay page on Wednesday spotted by AppleInsider shows the addition of the ten new retailers, including Acme, Davis Food & Drug, Firehouse Subs, GameStop, Luby’s, Rubio’s and T-Mobile. Further, basketball fans can now use Apple Pay to buy items at three arenas, including the Phoenix Suns’ US Airways Center, which made the list on Wednesday.
Rolled out last October, Apple Pay is the company’s first foray into the world of contactless payments. Using an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus, which are equipped with the necessary near-field communications technology, you pay for an item simply by waving your iPhone near an NFC-enabled payment terminal or device. Your credit or debit card information is securely stored in your iPhone, and then your card is charged once you make the transaction.
Once set up, the payment process is easy enough. The challenge for Apple is to round up enough vendors to support the system. The Apple Pay page currently shows 68 retailers who accept Apple Pay with 13 more coming. But the company will need to enlist many more vendors if it expects iPhone 6 owners to use Apple Pay as a standard way of paying for items. Otherwise, they’ll more likely continue to use cash or credit cards out of force of habit.
And Apple does face challenges. In order to support Apple Pay, retailers must have NFC-enabled terminals or point-of-sale systems to conduct the transaction. That puts the burden on each vendor to update the terminals at all of their stores. Apple also has to deal with competition from similar payment services.
Google is one contender, especially after it announced a partnership with Softcard in February. A joint venture between Verizon Wireless, AT&T and T-Mobile, Software opens more markets for Google Wallet. Last month, the search giant also unveiled Android Pay, another mobile payment service.
Samsung is another contender as it has outfitted its new Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge smartphones with Samung Pay. The result of an acquisition of LoopPay, Samsung Pay does not require NFC-equipped terminals as does Apple Pay and therefore is backward compatible with existing POS systems.
Merchant Customer Exchange, a group composed of various retailers led by Walmart, also has cooked up a mobile payments service called CurrentC. MCX plans to launch CurrentC nationwide sometime this year. And even PayPal is joining the competition with its purchase of Paydiant, a startup that helps businesses build mobile payments options. Paydiant is part of MCX.
Apple did not immediately respond to CNET’s request for comment.
