A Look into the Lives of Apple Pay Users
In this day and age, technology is becoming more prominent in our lives. We rely on it throughout the day to make our lives easier. From waking up to the sound of our alarm clocks to relying on Google Maps to get us to our destination, it helps us with our needs. We knowingly or unknowingly use it to find shortcuts. Contactless pay, more specifically ApplePay is a prime example. Cash used to be the main source of payment, but then it shifted to credit cards, and now Apple Pay. Apple Pay was first introduced in 2014 to allow its users to make payments easily and securely either in person or online. The Apple website gives clear instructions on how to set up Apple Pay. Apple Pay is an easy method of payment because the user can double click the lock button on their iPhone to open up the digital wallet and then proceed to choose the card from the wallet they want to use to pay. To complete a transaction, Face ID, Touch ID, or password is necessary to make it secure. There are millions of people using it daily, but everyone has different experiences with it. Apple Pay is widely used by Gen Z so I interviewed a few of my friends and family to ask about their encounters with Apple Pay.
The first person I interviewed was my roommate Krisha. She has been using Apple Pay for about two years now. Krisha had many positive experiences with Apple Pay, but she mentioned how she became very reliant on it which caused her some inconvenience. A few weeks ago, she went out to buy a gallon of water from Wawa thinking she would pay with Apple Pay. She only brought her phone with her. When she was at the register checking out and tried to use Apple Pay, her Discover card would not go through. The cashier said that they have been having a problem with Discover cards and the physical credit card is needed for the payment to go through. There was no backup option in this situation so she couldn’t buy the water. When people become reliant on new technologies and it doesn’t work there are always areas for improvement to make them one hundred percent reliable for all users. After evaluating this situation, it can be seen that Apple needs to work on a way to ensure that all cards can be accepted in the form of Apple Pay.
Similarly, another friend Jill, went to a nail salon to get her nails done. She forgot her wallet at home, but did not stress about it because she thought she would be able to use Apple Pay thinking that all places accepted it. . When Jill was about to pay, she looked at the credit card machine and saw they didn't take Apple Pay because it was an older machine. She double-checked with the employee to make sure and found out they only took cash or card. Jill had to call her mom, who was 30 min away, to bring her another form of payment. In the article, Apple Pay: What it is, and Why it's Great News for Independent Retailers - Lightspeed it states “In 2014, when Apple Pay hit the U.S. market, only about 4 percent of retail merchants accepted it as a payment method. As of early 2019, that number has grown to 65 percent. Consumers have been adopting Apple Pay in increasing amounts as well.” The use of Apple Pay has significantly increased over the past few years and continues to grow. With users becoming more reliant on it, there should be a wider range of acceptance of it throughout stores.
Another person I talked to was my sister Maahi. She uses Apple Pay frequently because it is efficient and saves her time. As a loyal online shopper, she uses Apple Pay all the time. Maahi mentioned that a few months back she noticed a button that said “pay with Apple Pay” when she was checking out of PacSun. This was a feature she had never seen before, but she clicked on it because she had her Apple Pay set up and all she had to do was show Face ID to complete the transaction. The card information was already on the phone so it made it very easy to finish checking out and saved her time. Without this option, she would have had to go get her physical credit card and put in her card information manually, but instead, it was done for her. Apple Pay made things very convenient for her. Recently, a plethora of stores has integrated this feature into their apps to make checking out convenient for their customers.
Additionally, another friend I interviewed from Drexel, who would like to stay anonymous, had an incident where her wallet got stolen. Since then she preferred to not carry her credit cards around unless she was going on a multi-day trip. So after she got her cards replaced, she decided to add them to her phone’s digital wallet so she could use Apple pay instead of carrying her physical cards with her. She was hesitant to do so at first because she wasn’t sure how secure it was, but then she found out the digital wallet does not store your credit card information and each transaction has its own code so the card can’t be tracked. She has relied on Apple pay ever since this event and loves only having to carry her phone around instead of her phone and wallet. She did not have to worry about her cards being stolen because all the cards she used were on the digital wallet on her phone.
The last person I interviewed, an employee at Dunkin, was on the receiving end of Apple Pay. They mentioned how Apple Pay makes transactions easier because the customer just has to hold their phone up to the machine and the transaction goes through quickly which allows for faster checkout. This is a pro for both the employee and the customer, especially during rush hour. On the other hand, the employee did recollect an incident where one of the transactions had not gone through even though they heard the ring. By the time they realized this the customer had left, so there was no way of collecting the payment. The employee learned to be more cautious of these incidents, but they acknowledged that this is a rare occurrence. Despite this incident, they mentioned Apple Pay is very useful for businesses.
After interviewing my friends and the cashier, I realized that there are both pros and cons to Apple Pay. There is always room for improvement in areas of usability and inclusiveness by making sure payments do not get declined along with being integrated into more stores. Gen Z, as well as many millennials, have started to rely more and more on technologies such as Apple Pay in their everyday life. In order to be able to entirely depend on it, enhancements must be made. Apple Pay can easily be set up and save you in times of need, being a safe and convenient way of payment.
