This has been a common scenario for many countries and cities around the world, for a long time, before the MTA introduced it, with similar flawless execution. Just off the top of my head, London, Singapore, Sydney, Japan and South Korea.
I remember when Americans were initially hostile to NFC payments almost a decade ago, but I guess times change?
There was a first wave of contactless in the US, which then died very quickly because major retailers sued Visa/MC about preferential terms for contactless cards, and won.
The new wave seems mostly driven by Stripe and Square being adopted by small businesses everywhere and supporting it out of the box, forcing the major retailers to finally catch up.
Transport of London used (and still does) Oyster Cards (contactless smart cards). when they switched the system to also support contactless credit cards all they had to do was flip a switch, the support was already baked in.
contactless credit card support on TfL started in 2012 and the full rollout was in 2014.
Suica (used for transit in Japan) has been supported on Apple Watch in Japan since the Apple Watch Series 2 way back in 2016
On the London Underground since 2014 you can use any regular EMV NFC debit/credit card to tap in and out of turnstiles. Since Apple Pay just implements the EMV standard, it works just fine as well with any credit card you have added in there.
Suica was amazing the last time I visited Japan. Just bop your watch and go. It even supported reloading cash from my US credit card with the native iOS/watchOS provided card management UI, no need to fidget around with a questionably engineered third party app.
NFC is NFC. Tap to pay with the physical cards is what convinced me to finally start using the same thing on my phone. If I had a watch... I'd probably still use the phone? I'm not entirely clear on why or how Dick Tracy inverted, yet again.
Note that I have no problem with others liking the watch. I just don't see what makes it so much more convenient than a phone. Curious what will pull me over.
Doesn’t the phone have to be unlocked? The watch authenticates one time when you put it on (and unauthenticates when you take it off), so you can securely pay for things via a double click of a button then tap, vs having to unlock the phone with your face first or enter a pin or whatever. If someone steals your watch, they can’t steal your money unless they some how can cut off your wrist without triggering an unauthentication.
Doesn’t need to be unlocked for public transport transactions, just tap the locked phone (watch also works without further interaction). https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT212171
For general payments, yes, but Apple allow-list known public transport networks to charge cards without auth. I would guess this involves auditing the crypto, being fairly sure they aren't going to mess it up, having a very limited payment amount (Transport for London for example "charges" £0.10 when you tap in/out, and then bills you the correct balance at the end of the day).
My paranoia is such that I'm sure I would require my watch also have some form of "be unlocked." And since this is largely, "be unfolded and have seen my fingerprint recently," feels like a non issue?
Phones aren’t secure enough, even if it’s seen your face or fingerprint recently. Actually, Apple offered a way to use your watch to make your phone easier to unlock, as long as your watch is nearby and has been authenticated itself. The whole “on your wrist” authentication experience can be used for the phone also, I guess.
Pulling out my phone while in motion greatly increases the likelihood I will drop it, or that it will be stolen out of my hand (especially by a thief going the other way).
Isn't it the same thing, just NFC? The only difference I know is that your watch/phone will not limit you to a certain amount like your card will, since you're authenticating when paying.
That never happens and I wear my Apple Watch all day and all night (for sleep tracking) except for when I shower -- I plop it on my charger once a day when I shower and it charges to full during my shower (it doesn't take that long for the Watch to charge to full)
iOS devices also have Power Reserve, which lets you use wallet and express transit for up to 5 hours even after your battery is out of juice.
Traveled to Japan recently (time zone change, long transpacific flight). No problem. I charged the Watch when I got to the hotel and it still had quite a bit of charge left. Then I just charged it whenever I showered and that worked for me.
The Watch isn’t like a phone. It doesn’t have a lot of background apps running and the battery life between charge intervals is more than enough.
Good for you, but with a battery life measured in hours, not days, unless you've got a life that's on such a routine that you charge it every day, it's going to run out of battery. I have a Series 4 watch and that thing spends most of its time at 0% battery level. It's not so useful when I'm just sitting at home, so I don't bother to charge it unless I'm planning on going out.
Battery life is actually 1.5 days for Series 7, and whatever routine one has with smartphone charging, one can implement the same with Watch. I tend to shower daily but I know a lot of Northern Europeans have different ideas about that so charging at bed time works too.
in most of the world, the credit card companies told vendors that they'd have to be liable for any fraud committed through payment terminals that hadn't been upgraded to chip and pin. so every vendor upgraded their terminals.
in the US, credit card companies continued to accept liability for magstripe transactions up until a couple years ago. i think it was an attempt to hold onto their absurdly high market share in the US - most other countries have higher debit card usage.
Canada also adopted it pretty quickly, years before the US. There was an extended period in there from around 2007 to 2020 where it felt like traveling back in time when I went to the US and it was magstripe and signatures again.
Don't forget about using cheques and having to use third-party applications for money transfer between people (Venmo, CashApp).
Americans always seem to come up with an excuse for why they are slower, like a comment higher in this thread, despite the rest of the world moving on with more convenient and accessible technologies. Is it an overly defensive culture?
Do you really just use your bank's app to transfer money to anyone, though? Sure, here in Norway if I know their account number I can do that, but if I want to transfer money to a friend, I'm probably going to use Vipps because I only need to know their phone number. I consider Vipps to be a 3rd party app even though it's jointly owned by the major banks here.
Every country is unique, but the financial system in the US is, as far as I can tell, quite unique, in large part due to how large the country is both in physical size and population, combined with a governing system that decentralizes a lot of power (which means some changes are much harder to mandate vs what China can decide to do, for example). You have to understand some of these foundational differences, after which it makes much more sense why some things move much more slowly in the US.
>Do you really just use your bank's app to transfer money to anyone, though?
yes, in canada the process to transfer money to somebody is to go to the "e-transfer" section in your bank's app or website, enter the email address to send to and an amount, and hit send. you don't need to know account numbers or anything like that.
In Canada, yes. But Canada does have a massive advantage that there are only five major banks who already cooperate over a shared debit infrastructure called Interac, so when email transfers (initially “certapay”) were introduced, there was already a logical body to do the coordinating.
Smaller banks and credit unions have zero incentive not to participate in anything the big banks do since it will immediately put them behind 99% of Canadians.
The chip and pin terminals are now cheaper than the magstripe ones ever were (about $60) and are accessible to many more businesses, even those that don’t have multi year trading history with their bank. It’s absurd to say they could be used in many more places… I literally do not carry cash for the last 6 years or so. Prior to chip&pin many small restaurants and cafes could not get a magstripe terminal from their bank.
I’m curious what you mean by “worked better”? I haven’t used magstripe for a decade at least but can’t say I’m nostalgic for the experience.
This has been a common scenario for many countries and cities around the world, for a long time, before the MTA introduced it, with similar flawless execution. Just off the top of my head, London, Singapore, Sydney, Japan and South Korea.
I remember when Americans were initially hostile to NFC payments almost a decade ago, but I guess times change?