Apple Pay and inconvenience
November 9, 2014
Neuropolarbear cannot imagine what is inconvenient about the use of credit cards.
This is most likely because he uses the highly efficient wallet and the highly efficient pants-pocket in preference to the purse.
Discuss.
DrugMonkey 
November 9, 2014 at 10:32 am
Whatever happened to using cash? For drug lords, the benefits are numerous, including lack of traceability (unless someone wants to fingerprint all those bills at every transaction). The Feds can’t track down your purchases and the NSA can’t sell your information to corporations. Or something like that.
LikeLike
November 9, 2014 at 11:58 am
DM —
But without pockets, where are the women going to keep their phones? The same issue of inconvenience of wallets vs purses comes to play there as well. It seems to me the issue can be solved by addressing women’s clothing and habit of not using wallets rather than introducing a (probably) insecure and unnecessary additional proprietary payment system.
LikeLike
November 9, 2014 at 12:54 pm
What Jonathan Badger said, especially given the size of the new iphone.
LikeLike
November 9, 2014 at 1:01 pm
But women can’t be expected to have pockets. Pockets get in the way of the tight clothing that is required to be accepted in this male-dominated world. Pockets make us look fat. Nothing is worse than being a fat woman in today’s society. These problems are enormous and therefore the only acceptable solution is the purse.
LikeLike
November 9, 2014 at 1:10 pm
I can see the benefit of using a phone if all cards and accounts can be combined, but having experienced fraud and theft from multiple accounts this year, my biggest concern these days is security. Sound like an old man…..
LikeLike
November 9, 2014 at 2:00 pm
@dave (multiple accounts)
man, you must be very rich!! hahaha ( just kidding)
LikeLike
November 9, 2014 at 3:02 pm
You always do, Dave.
LikeLike
November 9, 2014 at 6:18 pm
In terms of creating a flash to startle and blind the cashier, thereby masking your exit, the iPhone is clearly superior. Credit cards need to be flung with great force and precision to achieve similar results.
LikeLike
November 10, 2014 at 8:11 am
@jonathan – women everywhere are laughing at guys who complain the new iPhone doesn’t fit in their pockets. When our clothes have pockets, they’re often too small and things fall out when we sit down. I wear khaki-like pants every day to work and I do put my phone in my pocket … when I inadvertently put my credit card there I either drop it on the floor repeatedly, wash it, or find it next time I wear the pants. For me the phone would be great. WRT security, I’m pretty sure the bad guys don’t need my phone to get my cc info. I doubt most of the theft happens at the card – most happens in the vendor systems which will be no more or less secure.
LikeLike
November 10, 2014 at 9:27 am
But, I still need a credit card to open doors. And I wouldn’t want to use my smarter-than-me phone to scrape frost off a windscreen.
Needed: A Swiss Army Smartphone with all possible tools. And the TSA to change its rules and let us through with a 3″ saw.
LikeLike
November 10, 2014 at 9:30 am
My spouse has a kickass bee stinger removal technique that uses a credit card. I don’t think a phone would work…
LikeLike
November 10, 2014 at 10:20 am
I like most apple products a lot. Yet, i don’t have an i-phone and, as neuropolarbear, I prefer my wallet and refuse to use any smartphone for purchases/payments. But I am still curious about that device that your spouse uses. What’s that for and how does it work?. Or is it a joke?. (With you one never knows).
LikeLike
November 10, 2014 at 11:41 am
You mean the bee stinger removal?
LikeLike
November 10, 2014 at 11:50 am
I would be totally open to paying by phone, but not in the current fragmented, adopted-by-a-few-big-stores form. Only once it is as ubiquitous as CC readers (for example, I use my phone to pay at Starbucks because nearly all their stores accept that mode of payment). Till then my credit cards stay as they are and my wallet stays as fat (mostly with unnecessary crap) as it is. Heck, I still need some place to store all those other non-credit cards and other junk so I don’t think that paying by phone will make me wallet-free.
LikeLike
November 10, 2014 at 12:25 pm
I bet the bee stinger removal device uses an interference of the Earth’s magnetic field in presence of the card’s magnetic stripe to pry away the bee sting. We all know there’s something with the bees and magnetic field.
A phone’ll fall flat here in this situation, and you will have to probably die.
LikeLike
November 10, 2014 at 12:33 pm
“bee stinger removal technique that uses a credit card”
Yes. I never heard of anything like it. It sounds to me like japanese language.
LikeLike
November 10, 2014 at 12:35 pm
WHERE IS MY GOOGLE BRAIN IMPLANT THAT ALLOWS ME TO SIMPLY SWIPE MY RETINA UNDER THE SCANNER AND PAY FOR ALL THE THINGS????
Geeze, google. Get on that, you sexist jerks.
LikeLike
November 10, 2014 at 12:36 pm
The spouse uses a credit card to remove a bee’s stinger from the flesh of a person who has been stung. It works amazingly quickly even with squirming/crying children. I am not sure a phone would be able to perform the same service.
LikeLike
November 10, 2014 at 12:39 pm
Sorry becca, the sexist jerks at Google are working on payment processing that uses breast recognition.
LikeLike
November 10, 2014 at 12:51 pm
DM, phones are getting as thin as credit cards anyway. Eventually they will replace the credit card bee stinger removal tool. Don’t you worry.
LikeLike
November 10, 2014 at 7:33 pm
What’s up with all the people saying women don’t carry wallets, or that wallets have to be carried in pants pockets to allow for a more efficient credit card swipe than that allowed with a purse? I actually prefer carrying just my wallet instead of a purse, when I can – like a clutch. However, I only ever put it in a coat pocket (no jacket or pant pockets), because that would create an unsightly bulge and deform the drape of the fabric in my jackets/pants (whereas coat pockets usually don’t get so deformed, but it depends on the coat, of course). Let me tell you: it is waaaaaay more efficient to carry your wallet around in your hand like a clutch than to stow it away in some pocket somewhere. Makes the credit swipe much faster and more elegant.
Anyway, why aren’t more men concerned about the proximity of their iPhones to their testicles when they place their iPhones in their pockets? If I was a guy, I’d be happy they didn’t fit in my pants pockets:
http://www.webmd.com/infertility-and-reproduction/news/20080919/cell-phone-use-linked-male-infertility
Not that I really care if most men reproduce.
For the sake of full disclosure: I do not intend to ever own an iPhone.
LikeLike
November 10, 2014 at 11:47 pm
We need fewer humans on this rock so….win-win.
LikeLike
November 14, 2014 at 6:58 am
I agree with this point; many women (my wife included) would have an easier time finding their iphone than their credit cards, and more often have their phone than their cards. Of course, as some commenters noted, this will not be true for all women.
So, does this mean that Apple Pay is designed for the relatively small number of people who (1) are women (or more precisely, humans who dont use pocket wallets) and (2) own the iphone 6 and (3) dont mind entering the security code each time?
I would guess (=i have no data) this group includes fewer than a million people in the US.
LikeLike
November 14, 2014 at 11:28 am
I’m pretty sure the iPhone 6 itself would make me look fat so I’m sticking with credit cards and my slimming purse. I like to cut a trim figure when conspicuously consuming, and while the iPhone 6 itself would be a nice bit of conspicuous consumption, I’ll just have to pass on the great shopping convenience it offers.
LikeLike