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Eddy Cue right about “a lot of work to do” as Apple Pay glitches emerge

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While early Apple Pay experiences appear to have been mostly positive, Eddy Cue’s admission that there is still “a lot of work left to do” has been demonstrated in a number of glitches in the system – some of them resulting in multiple payments being taken for the same transaction … 

The NYT‘s Molly Wood reported that while in-store use worked well, using it within the small number of supported apps wasn’t quite such a seamless experience. In two instances, multiple payments were taken for a single transaction.

I used the Instacart app to order groceries. Each time I tried to check out, the order appeared successful and I got a charge notification. But then I got an error saying the order didn’t actually go through because of a formatting problem.

My bank saw three separate charges, although Instacart assured me the problem was fixed and I wouldn’t be overcharged.

Apple later confirmed that the glitch was indeed a formatting problem in the data, and fixed it the same day.

Wood had a similar experience with the Uber app.

Uber initially let me request a car without signing in, but the app made me sign in after the car had been requested and then asked for an email and phone number. The multiple steps caused Apple Pay to authorize three separate payments of the Uber base fare.

Some of the issues appear to result from using apps without signing-in – something Apple Pay in principle makes possible, but which many apps don’t yet appear to properly support. Using the Target app, for example, allows individual items to be purchased one at a time with Apple Pay, but the basket functionality still needs you to be registered and signed-in.

ReadWrite‘s Owen Thomas (via Business Insider) hit a glitch before he got as far as making a payment. He reported that for both the card already linked to iTunes, and a second card he scanned, the wrong card images were displayed.

One of my cards was already in iTunes; I added another using my iPhone’s camera. […] In both cases, Apple Pay displayed the wrong image for my card in Passbook—which seems especially absurd, since it scanned my card to add it in the first place. This is probably my bank’s fault. It’s still confusing, since the image is meant to signal at a glance which card I’m using.

It’s worth noting that most of the issues described appear to be the responsibility of app developers and banks rather than Apple, but clearly customers will blame Apple Pay rather than individual players. I suspect those on Cue’s team are going to be working some long hours to ensure such issues are quickly resolved.

On a more positive note, while those living overseas are waiting impatiently for Apple Pay to go live (me among them, in the UK), our readers have been finding that supported US cards already work fine on NFC terminals in other countries.

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Comments

  1. patstar5 - 9 years ago

    Is there anything exclusive to the technology apple is using for apple pay? Isn’t it just nfc? So every location that takes apple pay takes google wallet also?

    • William Hook - 9 years ago

      Anywhere that accepts contactless payments should work fine with both – however they both go about it slightly differently. Apple’s implementation is more secure than Google Wallet – not too sure of the details, but a bit of Googling should bring you more info.

    • Ben Lovejoy - 9 years ago

      Apple Pay uses single-use codes, which is based on a more secure form of encryption (developed by Visa) than standard NFC payments (which are encrypted, but transmit the same data each time). But yes, Google Wallet should work with any NFC terminal as it simply emulates a card.

    • NFC is just a communication transport, it doesn’t have anything to do with payments in particular. The benefits of the Apple way are in their software stack, their TouchID and the agreements they’ve made with the banks and card issuers.

      So while use of the communication technology is not exclusive and can be used with many other solutions and platforms, including plain old plastic cards with embedded chips, the rest of the solution is, and this is where the benefits shine above everyone else in the game – for the consumer, for the merchants, for the banks and card issuers and for Apple.

    • aeronperyton - 9 years ago

      Their handshake method is unique (read: astoundingly more secure than anything else), but the hardware is off-the-shelf NFC readers. Support for Google Wallet as a service, however, is up to each retailer. Just like how support for Apple Pay is up to them as well.

      • Joshua Muthumani - 9 years ago

        Nope. Anyone who accepts apple pay should be able to support google wallet and vice versa. The processing happens at the clearing house. The systems differ only in the data they send to the POS device [Apple onetime Vs Google emulated Card] which can accept any touches payment system.

      • aeronperyton - 9 years ago

        But that’s what I said, lol.

        The hardware is platform agnostic. The hardware needed to support Apple Pay is the exact same hardware needed to support Google Wallet.

        But you will find stores that only support one or the other, or neither (even though they have a working NFC terminal). The reason for that is because it’s their choice which services they choose to accept. Doesn’t matter if they have compatible hardware, they can’t be forced to take Google Wallet or Apple Pay if they don’t want to.

    • baf2099 - 9 years ago

      I’d say the most annoying thing so far has been that NFC ready terminals in big stores are not activated and ready for use. I tried at my local ShopRite and the lights on the terminal didn’t do anything which leads me to believe they are disabled. I talked to the store manager who proceeded to call higher ups and she says to them, “People have been trying to use their phones all day to pay, why the heck isn’t it working?”. Made me laugh a little, but that’s my question exactly.

  2. davidstewart01 - 9 years ago

    Has there been any suggestion when ApplePay is coming to the UK? With the greater adoption of contactless payments and examples such as Oyster Card in London, I would have thought it would be quite easy to implement over here.

    • davidstewart01 - 9 years ago

      Hopefully it won’t be a repeat of iTunes Radio…

    • Ben Lovejoy - 9 years ago

      Yeah, in principle it would have made sense to launch in Europe first, but that would never have flown from a PR perspective.

      • Simon Potts (@simoncbp) - 9 years ago

        Whilst being enthusiastic to seeing it rolled out, outside of the US – aside from the PR issue of launching in the US, there is a logic there too. Given that NFC terminals (and their adoption) are relatively rare within the US – by launching Apple Pay in the US, has enabled Apple to launch within an environment it can control through stipulating configurations up which the merchants then adopt. Once the teething problems are shaken out of the system using the US as a test bed, this will result in a stable platform with known requirements which can be rolled out further afield. Conversely were Apple Pay have been rolled out in a NFC-mature market (e.g. UK) then Apple would have had less control and have had to work with more NFC terminals manufacturers and various flavours of configuration – giving rise to confusion when trying to resolve the issues which they are currently facing in the US.

      • Ben Lovejoy - 9 years ago

        Yes, it’s currently unclear whether the single-use codes just spoof a card – in which case they should work with any existing terminal as-is – or need a firmware update to support the new encryption standard.

      • Carlos R. Batista - 9 years ago

        It would have been more dangerous to launch Apple Pay in Europe or Canada first. We have contactless terminals absolutely everywhere, even on vending machines. If anything it makes more sense to pilot this tech at a place where most people have no idea about what contactless payments are or what to even expect from it, aka U.S.A.

  3. Joel Henson - 9 years ago

    I used Apple Pay twice this morning and it was seamless and very cool. Both transactions were in person though.

  4. aeronperyton - 9 years ago

    I have to say that I am impressed with Apple’s revitalized stance on fixing problems with their products and services.

    On the surface it looks bad that there have been so many glitches and bugs. Most of them have been sensationalized and overblown, but they are still problems that needed to be fixed. But if you dig deeper you see Apple crouched in an attack posture, jumping on each and every one of these mistakes almost instantly!

    I don’t think that the increase in feature-breaking bugs or iCloud downtime is anything but happenstance, but Apple snap reaction times are definitely deliberate. I have a lot of confidence in Apple, as they venture into even more territories that are new to them, that they can not only handle themselves but that they can continue to deliver the above-average quality that everyone has come to expect from them.

    That said, if you guys could find the time to bring iTunes Radio to Japan I would really appreciate it.

  5. quagski - 9 years ago

    Personally, I’m going to stick to live transactions. I would like to experience how the Open Table app handles Apple Pay, though.

    • Mr. Grey (@mister_grey) - 9 years ago

      If my “live transactions” you mean anything but cash, that’s a pretty silly position to take as all the other types have similar (if not more) problems and less security.

      I live in Canada and like Europe we already have all the infrastructure and have had for years, so it will likely come here very soon.

      What I don’t understand is why I would use this over chip and pin for the majority of my purchases, and I think the Europeans will be of the same mind. Since we have had “tap to pay” for ages, (almost the same thing) here is my experience with it.

      – If the purchase is large, you generally don’t want to just tap, you want to see the money going through.
      – If the purchase is small, then you don’t want to tap, because you need to leave a tip.
      – chip and pin is maybe ten second slower, but provides the ability to tip, and you get to see the money.

      As a result, even though we’ve had tap to pay for years up here, I would argue most folks still use chip and pin. I rarely see anyone use tap to pay.

      Pay will be popular of course simply because Apple. But it’s not necessarily the “final solution” or anything. The only way that would work is if all service industry places start adding a gratuity automatically to your bill, and in the USA in particular with all that hyper-aggressive freedom you have, that won’t fly at all.

      • fattym77 - 9 years ago

        I think he (or she) is just stating that they are going to stick to using ApplePay for in-store transactions only and not use ApplePay through an app…

      • Kai Brinker (@kbrinker) - 9 years ago

        The ability to add a gratuity could easily be a future enhancement to Apple Pay.

  6. I’d love to see Apple Pay come out in Canada. But we’re usually not first on the list for most things Apple. We still don’t have iTunes Radio, and I’ve really been waiting for that.

    • Joel Henson - 9 years ago

      You’re not missing much. It’s a nice service but needs several tweaks to be better. I do use it a lot but once my skips are up I jump to Pandora and/or Spotify.

    • If you think so, try to imagine how it will be here: in Brazil… it will take ages for it to happen!

  7. Mr. Grey (@mister_grey) - 9 years ago

    The article is about Apple pay glitches and which kind of implies there are problems with Apple’s concept, then it turns out that all the errors are actually errors in third party programs written by developers. The very same developers that 9to5Mac spends a lot of time praising, supporting, etc.

    Why not call a spade a spade? Shitty apps written by developers who aren’t being very careful seems to be a large part of the problem here.

  8. pecospeet - 9 years ago

    You make an assumption that when Eddie Cue says there is a lot of work to do, he was referring to Apple. From the quote, it is not clear to whom he was referring. At this point, it appears that the work lies with the third parties, but that does not (yet) mean that the Apple software is 100%. At least Apple appears to be jumping on these glitches regardless of the cause.

    Taken as it is, it sounds like Mr. Cue’s comment is spot on and there is nothing misleading about the headline or article.

  9. joeho717 - 9 years ago

    Went to McD near work, tried Apple Pay .. crashed their ATM system on the first try. Waited about 5 min for it to reboot, and 2nd time it worked.

  10. Edison Wrzosek - 9 years ago

    So far, most of the glitches that have surfaced, with the exception of the wrong card graphics, are not Pay glitches… This seems to be issues with the third-party apps not being coded properly to support some of the Pay functionality, which doesn’t surprise me because lots of developers today don’t care about their code quality, they just care about pushing it out the door to make more money, and worry about bugs later.

    Like the issue reader joeho717 mentioned, the “glitch” was with McD, not the Apple Pay system. They’re NFC terminal was unstable, what a shocker, this is new tech to the US, unlike most other developed areas of the world, like UK and Canada.

    • regbs - 9 years ago

      Represent, Edison! “They’re NFC terminal.” I realize most Canadians stop getting educated at 16 and denied university level courses so that the British class system imposed on Canada can assure university places are reserved for rich kids, but “their” and “they’re” are elementary school level concepts in the US, where a higher proportion of citizens have university educations than in Canada, europe, or your colonial masters the UK. That new tech was invented by American Charles Watson in America. Hard to take Canadians taking cheap shots at America and American technology. American Charles A Walton got the patent on RFID that made NFC possible. It’s American credit cards and processing infrastructure that you non-citizen subjects of your Queen rely on. The silicon-based micro chips, lasers, communication satellites, cellular communication – all American. Want to compare LTE coverage in the US with Canada and 1/3 poorer Europe? Even in tiny 9 million population Sweden, you’ll be lucky to get old 3G data 10 miles out of the capitol, while you’ll get >40mbps in 2000-person towns in the middle of US. Cellular data outside of the 4 “metro” areas that pass as cities in Canada? You don’t even get voice coverage in most of Canada’s territory. Here you are posting on the American Internet on American Apple’s products. No, giving Chinese step-by-step pictures doesn’t make Apple Chinese any more than it makes Volkwagen a Chinese company. Fact: Americans are richer per capita. 90% of Americans aren’t forced live within 90 miles of you non-independent British subjects whose every law requires your unelected British Crown’s approval. It’s a riot how many Canadians are ignorant of their status as British subjects with zero say in their head of state. 90% of Canadians don’t know that their head of state is the British monarch, whether they like it or not.

  11. weareinnovation - 9 years ago

    Simply impressed by the fact that Apple fixes third party related glitches in one day. And the fact that they do seem to listen to their first customers, who did know there were risks, who did face the risks, and reported them to trigger change among the developers community. One day for anything linked to payments is like light speed. In any other bank you’d need to prove the issue, document it, action insurances and then wait for weeks to get your payback. The immediate feedback and action in that case shows how the model makes sense from a launch perspective (you wouldn’t actually go global with such a sensitive and security demanding type of payment services without being sure you’ve fixed all glitches and understood where and why they’ve come up). Not sure I’d be looking forward a launch in Europe, I personally can’t afford to even fancy about buying a new iPhone. Well, my husband might get one though, if we crowd fund our Xmas gifts.

  12. roborobok - 9 years ago

    What was the last Apple’s product that was released without serious problems?

Author

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Ben Lovejoy

Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He’s known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels, a couple of SF shorts and a rom-com!


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