Apple Pay and the smart decision to work with the credit card industry, not against it

Apple Pay, Apple’s mobile payment system available in the U.S. since fall 2014, seems to have had a fairly good start. It is still too early to conclude whether this initiative will produce a big-time success. But the early signs indicate growing interest among retailers and increasing customer adoption.

When the solution was presented a couple of months ago, one point of criticism about Apple Pay voiced by some was its reliance on the antiquated credit and debit card system. Instead of creating a completely new payment infrastructure and cutting out the existing gatekeepers, Apple decided to built on top of their system. In a time when Bitcoin and dozens of startups introduce people and retailers to new and cheaper ways of doing transactions, Apple chose to play nicely with the notoriously greedy payment establishment. I was not too enthusiastic about that either. Continue Reading