Apple Pay™: What It Means To The VAR Community

By Bill Lodes, TSYS Director of Developer Partnerships

Mobile payments, introduced years ago as the next revolution in payments, might finally be here with the launch of Apple Pay™, and it might just have the best chance for adoption yet.

Why Apple® will succeed.

Apple’s presence in the payments space will pose a tremendous impact on not just businesses and consumers, but also global behavior. Historically, Apple has been a great influencer of consumer behavior – just look at the role the iPod® played in transforming the way we listen to music. Apple is entering the world of payments with the same intention, positioned to change the way we live our lives.

Apple’s mobile payment solution will rise above the rest and is sure to help VARs acquire more customers. Here’s why:

When Apple Pay was announced on Sept. 9, 2014, it brought along a tremendous amount of support behind the new offering. Apple knew mobile payments had been introduced by others previously, and was aware of the adoption obstacles it had experienced. Changing consumer behavior would be a major challenge, but Apple knew they brought a different dynamic to this fight. With Apple’s 800 million iTunes® accounts they felt they had a leg up on the adoption curve, and planned to use that to their advantage. They also knew these accounts were only a piece of the pie, and to ensure success they would need to add brand recognizable players into the mix. Teaming up with several large retailers, established banks, card brands and a select list of proven processors like TSYS, they would be able to hit the ground running.

Apple created a foundation of advantages few before them were able to achieve, and now needed the vehicle to enable this opportunity. The introductions of the iPhone® 6 and iPhone 6 Plus took the launch of Apple Pay above and beyond other efforts. Built on a password-less authentication framework, TouchID™ enables secure payments via Apple ID without the hassle of trying to type in payments details. With the upcoming EMV liability shift in October 2015, Apple has seemingly hit the mark on security.

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