Tag: Apple Pay

According to a new survey from Square, customers who pay using NFC tech are more likely to tip.

NFC mobile payments are fast and are virtually instantaneous. This may be one of the reasons why consumer who use this type of payment tend to tip more compared to those who pay using traditional methods like magstripe cards. According to a study conducted in Portland by California-based mobile payment firm Square, 73% of customers who used near field communications (NFC) payments at point of sale (POS) left tips compared to only 67% of customers who used magnetic stripe cards.

Square spent six weeks in Portland educating local businesses about contactless payments.

For more than two months, Square remained in Portland for its #PayFasterPortland campaign. During the campaign, an increasing number of Portlanders began using their mobile devices to pay at local businesses that upgraded to Square’s new contactless and chip reader device.

Thousands of Portland sellers implemented Square’s new chip card and NFC mobile payments reader.

Square’s chip card and NFC reader is a small pocket-sized device with a powerful battery. It wirelessly connects to Android or iOS mobile devices and is made for NFC and chip, accepting EVM chip cards and Apple Pay as well as other contactless payments. The mini device is also designed to work with the free POS Square app

According to the official Square blog, Portland now has the highest “tap-to-pay” rates in the United States.

“Even before #PayFasterPortland, the city was number one in the country for orders for our new contactless and chip reader. And now the rate of people in Portland paying on Square’s new reader with mobile wallets like Apple Pay is higher than the national average,” the blog noted.

Square began rolling out its first contactless readers in November of last year. In March 2016, the company’s CEO Jack Dorsey revealed that the reader received over 350,000 pre-orders.

Due to the ease and speed of NFC mobile payments and with more businesses implementing the necessary devices that enable them to offer this payment option, this tech is likely to grow among both businesses and consumers across the country. It will be interesting to see if the high tipping percentage continues among NFC users.

The Korean electronics company sees its wallet app as a way to sell its devices, not fee-based revenue generation.

Samsung mobile payments are taking on rivals in the United States by using a different approach from what already exists. The company explained its goal to use the wallet app to sell smartphones over collecting fees.

This is a drastically different perspective on mobile wallets when compared to top rival, Apple.

Apple uses its mobile wallet as a part of its overall ecosystem. That said, Apple Pay, like other smartphone payment apps, is struggling for widespread and mainstream adoption. Meanwhile, its top competition, Samsung mobile payments, is going in a new direction. Samsung Pay is a strategy to encourage consumers to buy the company’s devices.

As such, this move breaks away from the typical mobile wallet model. Usually, mobile payments generate revenue through fees paid by financial partners and/or merchants. In Samsung’s case, it is an added selling feature for smartphones, tablets and other gear.

Samsung mobile payments will not be collecting usage fees from its financial partners.

Conversely, Apple Pay is a mobile wallet that mainly generates income by requiring its partner banks and financial institutions to pay a small charge for every completed transaction. The actual figure has not been publicly released. Equally, some reports have indicated that in the United States, it is a fee of 0.15 percent of the transaction.

On the flip side, Samsung Pay does not require its financial partners to pay a fee for its use. Instead, the electronics company aims to make it appealing to consumers, merchants and banks. That way, it will become widely available for use and will be a selling feature for its devices. This strategy uses the mobile wallet as a sales feature, not a revenue generator unto itself.

According to Samsung Pay global vice president, Elle Kim, “We’re a hardware company, and at the end of the day I think what we’re trying to do is get people who hold (one of) our phones and use it…to just love it more.” It will be interesting to see how the Samsung mobile payments strategy works against the competition.