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Businesses IOS The Almighty Buck Apple Technology

Apple Pay Has a Siri Problem (theverge.com) 223

Posted by msmash from the 'apple-pie' dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Katherine Boehret of The Verge reports multiple issues -- systematic, as well as general unawareness among vendors -- with Apple Pay. Citing instances from her own experience, she noted issues when using Apple Pay at McDonald's, Pret A Manger, and New York City cabs. From her report, "If I buy something at one of the wrong registers, the cashier must log out of it and log on at the right register before re-entering my purchase so I can use Apple Pay. This has happened at least a dozen times." She adds, "When a tool like Apple Pay works, it's like magic. You lift your phone, use fingerprint recognition to confirm the purchase, and walk away. The Wallet app in iOS shows you a list of your recent transactions, and adding credit cards is a simple process. But if Apple Pay fails enough times or isn't accepted at enough places, people forget it exists or think it's not worth trying to use. It's a lot like Siri in that way: too many failed attempts and you'll never open it again -- at least not on purpose."
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Apple Pay Has a Siri Problem More

Apple Pay Has a Siri Problem

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  • I guess I've been lucky. I've never paid at the wrong register or had it not work right.

  • Penny Arcade (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 21, 2016 @12:22PM (#51745089)

    Apropos Penny Arcade comic [penny-arcade.com]

  • Proof? (Score:5, Informative)

    by gabeman-o ( 325552 ) on Monday March 21, 2016 @12:25PM (#51745129)

    I use Apple Pay on a daily basis. I've used it in NYC cabs and all of the same restaurants referenced in the article. Seems like clickbait to me.

  • too many failed attempts and you'll never open it again

    If you don't want to use it, the FBI will be quite happy to help others help themselves to your Apple Pay account.

  • Puzzling Headline (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Monday March 21, 2016 @12:28PM (#51745149)

    I was puzzled about the headline for a while. Because Siri has had the opposite effect from that claimed.

    At first when Siri came out, it didn't work very well - so I didn't use it much.

    But over time I've used it more and more. Part of it is because every time you get new hardware, you simply try new things and over time I've found what things work well for me in Siri, and so I do use it quite often now.

    The same is true of ApplePay. The ability to use it may be limited now, and there may be some failures. But with every new phone, or AppleWatch purchase the desire to try it out renews - and over time more and more places will have working ApplePay terminals. In the end use will grow, because using it is so compelling for so many reasons (not the least of which is security).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cfalcon ( 779563 )

      I gave up using Siri for a lot of tasks I thought she could or should do. Tasks where, if I type the question into google, the answer is pretty plainly displayed, or anything involving the state from a previous question. I have found stuff she's good at, and I use her for that, but I would definitely have to hear that there was an improvement to go back to asking the more complex stuff that I would expect a voice assistant to be able to do.

  • Stop going to the wrong register (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Maybe she needs to stop going to the wrong register

  • It ain't there yet (Score:4, Interesting)

    by The-Ixian ( 168184 ) on Monday March 21, 2016 @12:29PM (#51745163)

    I cannot count how many times I have been behind the person who whips out their phone to pay only to be stymied by some little glitch. Bewildered expressions are exchanged, the words "try it now" are uttered one or more times and the process finally progresses when a manager is called in to fiddle with the PoS...

    I will stick with the mag stripe until adoption is much higher. It just works and is very fast, even with the stupid signature.

    I don't think the issue is with the technology per se... it is still just too new and support is too patchy.

    Still... we need the hipsters to deal with these annoyances for us so that we can experience a smooth transition.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by W2IRT ( 679526 )

      Exactly my own experiences with both AndroidPay and Samsung Pay on my Galaxy S6. Maybe one success in five, and each *pay transaction takes much longer than swipe-n-sign. Even using my EMV cards (at the one merchant I regularly buy from that has it enabled) is a much slower process. And of course, even IF the NFC payment is acccepted, you still have to confirm and sign (and accept/decline cash back, etc) on the terminal.

      So yeah. Not ready for primetime, and I just can't ever see these methods becoming mains

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by pz ( 113803 )

      I will stick with the mag stripe until adoption is much higher. It just works and is very fast, even with the stupid signature.

      Cash is even faster, and doesn't leave a mile-wide trail of your life.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cfalcon ( 779563 )

        The downside to cash, of course, is that you have to go refill the cash periodically, and some times it is not faster. It's not faster to buy gas with cash, because you have to walk in the store and (usually) wait in line. In places not overly paranoid, that's your only time-tax, but in other places you have to walk in first, hand over more cash than you plan to pay, walk back out, fill up, walk in, get your change.

        But in all cases, you have to go and get cash, and then worry about denominations to some d

      • Cash is about as fast as CC if the cashier is at all practiced. Add in an automatic change dispenser and cash is probably faster.

        Still, I like the paper trail of the CC. That, to me, is a feature.

    • I'm not a fan of NFC payments. But mag stripe? Really? Half the time the reader doesn't work properly. Or there is an confusing image showing which way to put the stripe and the reader was 10c cheaper by only being able to read in a certain orientation so it's 50/50 which way to swipe. Then you have to hand the card to the cashier for God only knows what reason. Use the chip reader. Of course that's not enabled a lot of places in the US either. I can't count how many times I've inserted my card and

  • If you think that's bad... (Score:3)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Monday March 21, 2016 @12:32PM (#51745195)
    Whenever my friend users Apple Pay at the grocery store, his credit union automatically disables his debit card and he has to call in to confirm that it wasn't fraudulent activity to reactivate the debit card. Apple Pay has never worked for him.

  • really? (Score:3)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Monday March 21, 2016 @12:37PM (#51745231) Homepage

    The merchant screws up so that is an apple problem..

    Dammit Samsung, my car is out of gas again!

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by LWATCDR ( 28044 )

      No Apple has a problem, it is the same problem Google has with Android Pay and Microsoft has with Microsoft wallet.
      You have no idea how many times I have walked up to a terminal and try to use my phone and I am told that it doesn't work yet. So I take out my card and put it in the chip reader and have to hear them say that doesn't work yet...
      Back to the magstripe reader...
      If it nfc payments keep failing people will stop trying to use them.

  • If I buy something with ApplePay, and then need to return it, and thus get the price credited back to my credit card. The cashier often requires that they see the credit card.

    But you can't hand them the credit card that ApplePay is tied to, they're expecting some other number that Apple pay uses...

  • I've been using NFC to pay without issue at a ton of places since 2012, first using my Samsung S3, now on my Moto X (Walgreens, Sports Authority, McD's, Hess, ShopRite to name a few). Many more places since since Apple got into the game.

    Other than CVS, which disabled theirs, I haven't had any trouble. In their case, I just switched all my prescriptions to Walgreen's so I can tap and pay again with no problem. In NYC, a **lot** more places have it now, some without even realizing it. Just look for wh

  • Dumb, expensive fad (Score:3)

    by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Monday March 21, 2016 @01:10PM (#51745591)
    It's really a dumb, expensive fad. Paying with a phone will never make it big for many reasons. One of the biggest is that the merchant doesn't want to give up an extra 1% or whatever Apple/Google end up charging so that some customers can play a little bit more with their phones. It doesn't solve any problems.
    • Until you can have your drivers license on your phone there is no way to go 'cardless', so there is nothing lost by having to also carry a credit card.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by shmlco ( 594907 )

      Uhh... IIRC, I think Apple Pay reduces the rate merchants pay, as the user-present biometric scan minimizes the chance of fraud over a straight mag card swipe.

      It also introduces a one-time code into the mix such that I, as a user, don't have to cringe the next time I hear my local grocery store or drug store has had umpteen-million credit card numbers stolen.

      So, one big reason down and one additional problem solved. You're batting 0 for 2 so far...

  • Siri has a problem? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Trailer Trash ( 60756 ) on Monday March 21, 2016 @01:27PM (#51745747) Homepage

    I use Siri probably 5 times per day on average, and I have a problem with maybe once per week. I have teenagers so, shit, Siri is way ahead of the game in understanding simple directions.

    I can make a calendar entry with Siri in 1/10th the time it takes to do it on the phone or desktop. "schedule teeth cleaning on may 5 at 9am at franklin dental care". It just works. "ask my wife do you want anything from the store while I'm here?" "call my wife". "wake me up at 6am" I don't use it for thousands of different things but for what I use it for it really makes using the phone much easier.

    Even my wife can use it with her accent.

    My main gripe with Siri is that I cannot get her to call me "el conquistador" unless I use straight spanish for the language. I can change to spanish and say "me llamo el conquistador" and it works, but when I switch back to english she tries to pronounce "el conquistador" using english pronunciation rules and it falls apart. Sadly, "mein fuerher" suffers the same problem.

    • I use Siri probably 5 times per day on average, and I have a problem with maybe once per week.

      I use it maybe once every month or two. Most of the time it comes up by accident when I don't want it to. I also am often in places where I don't want to say instructions out loud to Siri. I have no interest in announcing to the entire office that I'm going to the dentist on Friday.

      I can make a calendar entry with Siri in 1/10th the time it takes to do it on the phone or desktop.

      When it works, yes. But I routinely have to do it at least twice because it (or me) screws something up. It's almost always faster for me to search by typing and it can be absolutely terrible about addresses. Your mileage m

  • We could have a new process where your bank account is not tied to your phone with the advantage that you will not be stuck without payment option if you lose your phone. It also means less data you have to worry about setting up and transferring when you get a new one... I mean, what is your time worth? So I propose having a small piece of plastic, much like a card encoded with your bank account information. When you make a purchase you simply swipe it through the card reader to send the funds from your ac
  • This sounds to me like "I went to a cash only till, and tried to pay with card, and then the lady at the till had to re-scan everything at the card enabled till"

  • This sounds sirious!

  • The whole goal of Apple Pay (and Tap and Go, for that matter) is the attempt on the part of the Consumerism Machine to make it as Painless as possible to part us from our money. They don't want you to really Feel that over-priced coffee and croissant bleeding your wallet dry, day after day.

    If something is less than easy, it becomes painful if we have to go through it for no real reason.

    As a Canadian, I had anything tap-related disabled on my debit card the second I found out it was there. (My bank didn't ev

  • Now that "chip and pin" credit cards are becoming common, I don't see what these phone pay systems solve. Either way, I have to haul something out of my pocket, position it appropriately (stick it into a slot - wave it at a sensor) and perform some second-factor authentication (pin number, password or fingerprint).

    While we're in the switch-over phase, I can use my credit card in old-fashioned magnetic stripe systems. Business owners only need to plug in the equipment (which they probably already have) an

  • I still haven't seen a very good reason to use Apple Pay over just taking out my credit card. I know that my credit card is going to be accepted and work in about 99.9% of the places I go, rather than the (insert randomly low percentage) of places that Apple Pay will work.

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