Yoda sighs deeply
The rumour mill is strong in this one Obi.
Apple has reportedly agreed to work with American Express on its new iPhone 6 payment system - which is now just nine days away from being unveiled by Cupertino. The latest rumour once again springs from the Re/Code blog, which cites those ever reliable (or not so much) sources familiar with the situation. But there will be …
"Sooo many places don't take American Express due to their insanely high handling fees."
It's slightly more expensive than MC/Visa, but plenty of places do actually accept it: all the supermarkets, petrol stations, BT, railway stations - generally, it's only small businesses that don't. The higher fees do buy great customer service, a good deal for customers (which is why I use it whenever I can: my card gives up to 1.25% of spending back as a straight account credit; my Amazon MasterCard gives me 1% of spending back as Amazon credit, making it my second choice). They also do more to promote their client businesses: I often get promotional credits for making particular purchases, like one-day offers of £5 on local restaurants, posting Tripadvisor reviews, signing up for services like Spotify... I've never had that with any of my MC/Visa cards.
Most absurdly, in a local Indian buffet (which DOES actually take Amex, and was even featured in Amex's small business promotion last year) the waiter told me "we don't take MasterCard, because that's the same as Amex".
I've had an Airline Amex for almost 10 years now.
I use it for all travel, food, fuel and the majority of online shopping.
Good insurance. Good car hire deals.
And enough airmiles to get at least 2 longhaul flight tickets a year
and keep elite status without really travelling all that much.
It's a myth it's not accepted anywhere.
Based entirely on what has crawled out of my arse after a heavy weekend.
iPhone 6 4.7" screen.
iPhone 6 Air(or Pro, or some shit) 5.5" Screen, dead expensive, 'reduced' availability.
oh, one more thing, we have this fancy watch thing, you can all have a good look at it, but it won't be ready until, just before Christmas.
"So the point isn't that nobody accepts Amex. It's that nobody (yet) accepts Apple!"
Other sources have reported that Apple are also signed up with Visa and Mastercard, so the lack of popularity for Amex is moot. I doubt that the payment processors want to tie themselves to any particular hardware or software, so chances are that there's similar deals in the offing for other phone makers.
The thing working in Apple's favour here is the single port of call (not only the software.hardware tie up, but that Apple can and will tell the MNO's to sling their hook). In the world of Android they've got to deal with a host of hardware makers, the vampire data squid that is Google, and the network operators. And each of them is daft enough to think they stand a credible chance of coming up with some proprietary NFC solution that will get them a big slice of the payment before they've gone anywhere near the payment processors.
Personally I might use Visa or Mastercard for NFC, but I wouldn't trust Google, hardware makers, and in particular MNOs. In relative terms Apple fall somewhere in the middle of my distrust spectrum (which only runs from "not much" to "not at all, in this universe and all others"), which is a pity given that I wouldn't touch their over-priced and under-specced hardware. And even Visa & MC can sling their NFC hook until they take liability for fraudulent use of NFC credentials.
"...coming up with some proprietary NFC solution..."
- no, actually they all use bog-standard NFC, just like everybody else. Only crApple would be arrogant enough to try and force everybody else into their own little universe.
- Lock-in, Steve Jobs' own peculiar genius.