Rite Aid and CVS Block Apple Pay and Google Wallet

An anonymous reader writes CVS and Rite Aid have reportedly shut off the NFC-based contactless payment option at point of sale terminals in thousands of stores. The move will make it impossible to pay for products using Apple Pay or Google Wallet. Rite Aid posted at their stores: "Please note that we do not accept Apple Pay at this time. However we are currently working with a group of large retailers to develop a mobile wallet that allows for mobile payments attached to credit cards and bank accounts directly from a smart phone. We expect to have this feature available in the first half of 2015."

Comments

Good luck with that.

[Noxal]

CurrentC seems way too involved for most people to ever give a shit about.

Re:Good luck with that.

[schwit1]

Current account? It's your checking account.

There are bad ideas out there but few come close to this one. Allowing retailers the ability to directly deduct money from your checking account is a hackers wet dream.

Re:Good luck with that.

[Applehu Akbar]

Because it's tapping your checking account directly, customers are not going to like this. And to use CurrentC, you have to open up an app on your smartphone and scan a QR code to make the transaction; with NFC, you just bring your phone up to a point near the register until the register recognizes a near-field chip, ready to ring up the sale as soon as you authenticate, which in Apple's case means placing your thumb on your phone's reader. NFC transactions are so fast that customers are going to want them used for everything. There are already vending machines that support it.

Re:Good luck with that.

[PopeRatzo]

Think of the soccer mom scenario...

Lady enters checkout line with baby on hip and two kids in cart. She's tired of wrangling, wants to leave ASAP.
Apple/Google: Using one hand, pulls phone out of purse, taps, enter pin on phone.

CurrentC: Pull phone out of purse. Unlock phone. Launch CurrentC app. Due to poor cell signal in store, app takes a long time to connect. Enter app pin. Request new transaction. Wait for QR code to show. Explain to the cashier you need them to scan this code. Wait for the second code to appear on Casher's screen. Scan that. Wait some more. Kids screaming murder now. Poor lady begins to cry.

or...

Credit Card: One hand. Swipe. Finished.

Why does anyone think that it's "more convenient" to use NPC than swiping a credit card?

Re:Good luck with that.

[ShanghaiBill]

My bank account is just as protected as my credit cards are, possibly more so.

Not true at all. Credit cards have explicit legal protections for consumers. Also, merchants must go through an approval process before they can charge credit cards. Additionally, you keep your money while the dispute is resolved. If instead, they deduct directly from your bank account, the money is GONE, and it might already be gone from the recipient account, and in the hands of some Nigerian prince, before you even file your dispute. Unlike with a credit card, your bank has no direct financial interest in resolving the dispute.

Re: Good luck with that.

[tysonedwards]

Than opening wallet, removing card and swiping it, entering a pin / signing a signature, returning it to your wallet versus just touching a device to a reader and having your device authenticate via your fingerprint / continuous biometrics?
Yeah, that is so much easier. Plus, there's the general liability concern with the transaction being biometric secured versus someone stealing your card. There's obviously some interest in why banks are interested in this detail for sure, hence why they even implemented single transaction card numbers.

Re: Good luck with that.

[PopeRatzo]

Yeah, that is so much easier.

There must be something wrong with me. Not once have I ever purchased something in a store and thought, "Gee, conducting that transaction was incredibly difficult. I wish someone would make an easier way to pay for this bag of groceries than this complex and difficult process of swiping a credit card."

This'll end up in court...

[TWX]

This isn't the sort of thing that "the market" can decide. I expect that it'll end up in court.

I wouldn't be surprised if patents come into it too, and since retailers aren't technology companies, they probably won't have the patents to even develop what they want without licensing, and tech companies with those patents are under no obligation to license them.

Re:This'll end up in court...

[silfen]

This isn't the sort of thing that "the market" can decide. I expect that it'll end up in court.

Why can't the market decide this? Why should this end up in court? We currently have deeply entrenched market dominance by credit card companies. Alternative payment schemes are coming out and attacking that dominance, and that only works if a critical mass of retailers actually stand up to the currently dominant players. If courts intervene, it will lock in the dominance and monopoly profits the credit card companies are extracting. Why do you think that would be a good thing?

No thanks.

[grub]

A token based system vs. direct access to my personal data and bank account? I'll take Apple Pay, thanks.

Re:No thanks.

[CaptainDork]

Apple has negotiated a lower fee and banks are agreeable to absorb initial revenue loss in an effort to make NFC a standard.. The fees are needed mostly to pay off credit card fraud and Apple Pay reduces that liability (so the reasoning goes). Rumor has it that the Apple Pay user will be liable for fraud to a much larger degree because it's so hard for the process to be abused.

The competing CurrentC standard, supported by major retailers, kills credit card fees and puts the fraud burden 100% on the consumer. For that reason, retailers favor CurrentC over Apple Pay and Google Wallet, both of which use NFC.

While Google Wallet and Apple Pay are available now, CurrentC is going to be late to the party by about a year.

That delay is what's prompting Rite Aid and CVS (supporters of CurrentC) to pull NFC from their POS.

Re:No thanks.

[AK Marc]

Your credit cards don't stop working when your phone does. There is no single point of failure. You just have to go get your cards, for your hypothetical failure.

DOA due to Liability shift to consumer...

[kbonin]

It appears that CurrentC moves liability exposure almost entirely onto the consumer, whereas Visa limits consumer exposure to $50 that most banks waive in actual fraud. Add full access to your bank account to make the worst-case liability exposure whatever you have in your account, and privacy terms that allow them to use health related data that could have been protected under HIPPA. Tell me again why I would want to use this?

Re:DOA due to Liability shift to consumer...

[Solandri]

It appears that CurrentC moves liability exposure almost entirely onto the consumer, whereas Visa limits consumer exposure to $50 that most banks waive in actual fraud.

They are two sides of the same coin. One shifts liability from the merchants to the consumer, the other shifts liability from the consumer to the merchants.

If we really want security in the electronic transaction system, liability has fall upon the organization(s) operating the transaction system - Visa, the banks, etc. If they don't pay a financial cost for fraud, they have no incentive to improve the system to prevent fraud. Penalizing consumers just drives them to use cash. Penalizing merchants just drives them to stop accepting cards and electronic payment. It's only when you penalize the folks who control the electronic transaction systems that you'll see improvements to said system.

The customer is wrong, wrong, wrong.

[Primate Pete]

Shitty customer service is not a strategy.

Re:I'm waiting to see who gets compromised first.

[jedidiah]

One hack can compromise the credit cards for MILLIONS of people.

"Hacking your wallet" requires a particular person to target you specifically and physically.

In order to do as much damage as a single credit card breach can, everyone in New York City would have to be the victim of a pickpocket at the same time. The great thing about computing is automation. You can fuck up on a grand scale really quickly and really easily.

There is absolutely no good reason for this.

[grahamsaa]

I used to use Google Wallet / tap to pay at Rite-aid frequently as there's one across the street from my office. I liked it. The other day when I went in and tried and got a message about Apple pay not being supported, I was pretty confused. I don't use Apple pay. Why disable functionality that was previously working and that customers want to use? Google wallet does not charge merchants at all (http://www.google.com/wallet/business/faq.html). If stores want to set up their own competing wallet apps, that's fine, but disabling something that previously worked and that costs them nothing is really stupid.

Re:Gruber at DaringFireball nails it

[Overzeetop]

Google knows only one thing more than Apple does - the value of your purchase. Apple knows which store you went to and when you paid (you are using their hardware; yes, they know). If you're paranoid enough to worry about the difference, you're probably paranoid enough to know that the Bank is tracking your purchase and selling your information on the open market and you should be paying with cash.

I'll say this, though - these merchants are NEVER getting a direct connection to my bank account. To me, Visa/MC/Amex's role is to buffer me from fraud and abuse. I realize that the merchants chafe over rates, swipe fees, and liability (I do to), but they seem to care very little about security and I really don't want their hand in my till.