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29 March 2024

'No. 1' Apple dares retailers

Published
By Joseph George

Apple has warned retailers that it is already the number one when it comes to mobile payments and reminded those unwilling to come on board its system that they could be going against what their customers want.

“It is not what they want that matters but what their customers want,” Apple CEO Tim Cook is reported to have said.

He is taking the fight head on as several key retail groups in the US, upset with the Apple’s recent introduction of mobile payment solution - Apple Pay, have blocked it from their payment counters.

Apple CEO Tim Cook who was speaking at the at the Wall Street Journal‘s WSJD conference in California has meanwhile sent a simple reminder and revealed that in the first 72 hours of Apple Pay, Apple saw over 1 million activations.

And the number according to Apple is set to grow significantly as the smartphone maker is joining hands with several key stakeholders including the online retail giant Alibaba.

Its CEO Jack Ma has already expressed interest to partner with Apple towards enabling Apple Pay and Cook later confirmed that a meeting could be held within the next few weeks.

Apple has already tied up with leading credit card companies such as American Express, MasterCard and Visa and several hundreds of thousands of retailers.

Apple’s aggressive stand is quite expected as it is estimated that at lest $90 billion could be transacted using mobile payment annually by the end of 2017.

Apple is yet to roll out the Apple Pay service outside the United States. But when it does it is sure to fundamentally change the way online and mobile payments are made.

Within the UAE itself you already can make mobile payments at various outlets. Many banks too have enabled NFC powered products that could be used at select retail outlets. Telecom provider du already has a NFC enabled SIM card that can be purchased for an additional Dh55 and thereby used to be used as a NOL card. Yet its usage is not widespread and Apple believes that its solution will bring about that change.

And Apple is reiterating that the system is safe. “We’re not Big Brother,” we’re not collecting your data. “We’ll leave that to others,” he pointed out at the conference.