Since Apple Pay has been released, customers have slowly, but surely, been catching up to it. Whole Foods, McDonalds and Walgreens are retailers that have been showing the most success. Whole Foods has accepted more than 150,000 Apple Pay transactions, McDonalds, “which accepts Apple Pay at its 14,000 restaurants in the United States, said Apple Pay accounted for 50 percent of its tap-to-pay transactions. And Walgreens, the nationwide chain of drugstores, said its mobile wallet payments had doubled since Apple Pay came out.” Even ApplePay competitors, such as Google and Softcard, have said that because of ApplePay’s success, their services are seeing much more attention and awareness.

Michael Abbott, chief executive of Softcard, a mobile wallet backed by AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon, said that “because of Apple, many companies now want to support the same technology for paying by phone: near-field communication, which enables devices to exchange information wirelessly over very short distances. This consistency would help make paying for things with a smartphone less confusing for shoppers.” Since Apple Pay’s release,  the Softcard app has been downloaded and successfully used much more frequently than  ever before. Google also said it’s mobile payment system, Google Wallet, has been used much more since ApplePay’s release.

Even though Apple Pay has been extremely influential in the world of mobile pay and even the world of technology in general, it still has a bumps in the road, such as the fact that Apple Pay is only featured on the newest versions of IPhone and the fact not many American retailers support the system.  Since it has only been three weeks since the release, however, the fact that it has seen such success, at all, in such a short amount of time is very inspiring to us and we hope to see more retailers supporting Apple Pay and in the end, supporting NFC and new technologies. We can’t wait to see what the world of retail technology looks like this same time next year.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/15/technology/apple-pay-gives-glimpse-of-mainstream-appeal-for-mobile-payments.html?_r=0