I Tried To Live Off Apple Pay, And It Didn't Really Work

I lost my credit card last week, something which I in no way blame on the Apple corporation. It represented an opportunity of sorts, however: I've got an iPhone 6, but had never really played around with Apple Pay before. This is great, I thought: I may have no credit card, but this is 2016, and the modern world being the technological wonderland that it is, I have several cards loaded into my phone. So I set about finding out what an Apple Pay life would be like. As it turns out, "limited" is the operative word.

I was staying in Venice, California, which seemed like as good a place as any to experiment. I downloaded a few apps to help me find places that accepted it, and my first moments with the map were a bit disheartening. At this moment, it seemed, I was going to be limited to Starbucks and Subway . There was no McDonald's around, which might have improved things somewhat. I could also buy clothes at American Apparel if I wanted to, but I was good on henleys. I figured that there surely must be some more places that took Apple pay than those listed on the apps, so I asked a few places, and came up short every time. Even the local CVS, which had seemed like a surefire hit, was a no go.

It's all compounded by another problem: walking up to the host or hostess of a restaurant and asking "do you take Apple Pay?" is not something I really want to do a dozen times in a row. It is possible, one supposes, that there were Apple Pay friendly establishments to be found by someone with more endurance in this matter than I, but they are clearly in the minority. There was a Whole Foods about a mile and half away, but alas, no car or time for it.

It may sound like I was out to disprove the efficacy of Apple Pay, but I really thought this was going to work. Unfortunately, while I didn't exactly starve, I was surprised to see just how few places were accepting what seemed like a pretty solid idea. One supposes there's just not too much reason for people to make the switch: few lose their cards as often as I do, and the old swipe thing seems to be working fine for most. NFC payments will likely worm their way into the mainstream via Square, but we begin to run into the same problem: nobody is going to go too far out of their way to cater to fools that lose their cards, and everyone else is perfectly happy to use their cards.

The worst, oddly enough, came when I got to the airport. It's curious, given that airports are generally a bastion of corporate influence. But with no McDonald's or Subway in my particular terminal, I was pretty much straight out of luck when it came to any of the restaurants. I ended up with a Coke and a thing of yogurt from what may or may not have been a Hudson News, but that felt like a compromise at best. My desire to have a drink on the plane was thwarted by not being on one of the handful of airlines that accept Apple Pay in flight, but recovered by a friendly BMW salesman.

It's too bad, because the few times I was able to use Apple Pay offered a real glimpse into an obviously superior future, at least from a practical point of view. Everytime I successfully used it it was quick, satisfying and easy. If the world would let me, I'd gladly give up my clunky old cards.

There was one app that allowed me to branch out a bit more, however: Venmo. Made it real easy to borrow money from my friends and pay them back in seconds, which ended up being how I got all of my non-Starbucks/Subway food.