Apple recently announced that it is going to extend its Apple Pay service to United Kingdom. Apple Pay is a mobile wallet and payment system launched late last year. In spite of the usual Apple’s way of presenting things along with relevant technical components, enabling contactless and in app payments failed to meet the expectations after many retail chains and companies refused to adopt it.
During the launch of Apple Pay, the company announced that it is going to collaborate with all major banks, credit card companies and retail chains to ensure countrywide usage of Apple Pay in the United States. But it didn’t go as well as planned due to competition from the likes of Bitcoin and Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX).
MCX is a payment system developed by a consortium of retail companies in the United States adopted by retail chains like 7-Eleven, Best Buy, Target, Walmart and many more. MCX was developed by the consortium to circumvent huge credit card charges.
Bitcoin, well-known to all of us is a P2P decentralized digital currency which can be sent to anyone across the world without any charges. Bitcoin is capable of offering all the features offered by Apple Pay and MCX at even lesser costs. In addition to lesser costs, Bitcoin payments also prevents the retailers or payment processors to access your personal information and spending patterns.
Apple Pay, faced with competition has been having a tough time acquiring more merchants. In addition to it, use of Apple Pay resulted in a drastic increase in fraud rates which was found to be over 6000% in comparison with conventional card swipes. With Google’s Android Pay slated to be launched sometime soon followed by Samsung Pay, Apple will be facing more competition for mobile payment market dominance.
Bitcoin support will be an added advantage for mobile payment services, while none of the above players have announced anything in this regard yet.