Why Your Store Should Be Accepting Apple Pay – The Top 5 Reasons Apple Pay is a Must for Merchants in 2020

Why Your Store Should Be Accepting Apple Pay – The Top 5 Reasons Apple Pay is a Must for Merchants in 2020

Successful retailers know two things: you have to give customers as many payment options as possible, and you have to ensure they can make those payments quickly. That ensures happy customers in brick and mortar environments and ensures minimized cart abandonment online. All merchants understand the importance of accepting debit and major credit cards, but not all merchants know how much they stand to gain from adopting one of the newer payment solutions on the market – Apple Pay. 

Apple Pay is Apple’s proprietary electronic payment solution, designed to replace the user’s wallet altogether and make totally secure payment a matter of a few seconds and a quick tap. The following are the top five reasons that merchants who haven’t already jumped on board should seriously consider adopting Apple Pay and offering it to their customers. 

1) Apple Pay Is Rapidly Growing

With 441 million users and counting, Apple Pay has exploded to over six times the userbase it enjoyed as recently as 2016. That growth is driven by the fact that Apple Pay comes stock on Apple’s computers and devices and is exceptionally easy to use. As long as iPhones and Macbooks continue to own an enormous share of the smartphone and laptop market, that userbase will only continue to grow. 

A big part of the growing popularity of Apple Pay is the fact young consumers, specifically members of Gen Z and Millennials, view Apple not just as a company, but as a lifestyle brand – a brand they want to be connected with. As a result, the ability to engage with that brand on the payments front is an easy decision. That’s a big deal considering that those young consumers are the highest-volume shoppers today, and represent the future of commerce tomorrow. 

2) Apple Pay is Extremely Fast and Simple 

One of Apple Pay’s biggest strengths is how easy it is to use. Apple Pay enables users to load all of their payment cards (and even some loyalty cards) into the Apple Wallet on their devices. They can then make payments directly from their devices without the need to pull out cards or key in numbers. 

For in-person shopping, Apple Pay uses near-field communication (NFC) technology to send and receive a weak radio signal when in close proximity to a payment device. All the user needs to do is pull out their phone, swipe their thumb over the Touch ID, and they’re done – no bulky wallets, no physical cards, just quick, easy payment. At home, Apple Pay integrated stores are just as easy. All users need to do is choose the Apple Pay button when they check out, verify their identity with Touch ID and Face ID, and their payment is away. It really is among the most convenient payment methods available today. 

3) Apple Pay Offers Additional Security

Debit and credit cards offer easy tap payments as well, thanks to the built-in chips in modern EMV cards, but the big flaw in that system is that anyone can tap a card and make a payment in a brick and mortar environment. There are limits on tap transactions, but a lot of damage can still be done through taps when a chip-enabled debit or credit card is stolen. With Apple Pay, the need for identification through either a thumbprint or quick face scan ensures that no bad actor can make fraudulent transactions with a stolen iPhone – assuming they can even unlock it, to begin with. 

The same applies to online transactions. Ecommerce is very secure, but the potential does still exist for fraud. Apple Pay helps minimize that risk because keying in the correct credit card details is meaningless if the user can’t also verify their identity biometrically. 

4) Apple Pay Facilitates Contactless In-Store Payments

The COVID-19 pandemic has made life extremely difficult for people all over the world. The combination of business shutdowns and caution regarding social distancing and person-to-person contact has led to two major trends: a shift away from cash in favor of touchless payments, and a major move towards online shopping. Those trends are not going away any time soon, and the new normal is one in which cash is no longer a favored way to pay and electronic payments will continue to grow in dominance. That makes it extremely important for businesses, both online and brick-and-mortar, to offer as many different electronic payment methods as possible. Apple Pay is a key part of that touchless payment ecosystem, making it an easy choice for store owners everywhere. 

5) Apple Pay is Easy to Integrate

Sometimes integrating new hardware or systems can be difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. Apple Pay, on the other hand, couldn’t be easier. For in-person payments, the only things merchants need is an EMV-compliant payment terminal, as Apple Pay will automatically work with any payment hardware set up to accept tap payments. 

Online, Apple Pay integrates with a wide variety of the most popular gateways and payment processors, and can sometimes be enabled in as little as a few clicks. The overall ease with which merchants can begin accepting it makes it hard to come up with any good reasons not to offer Apple Pay to customers. 

Getting Set Up with Apple Pay

Merchants looking to get set up with Apple Pay need look no further than BAMS, one of the leading merchant services providers in the world. BAMS makes it as easy as possible for our merchants to begin accepting contactless payments through Apple Pay by ensuring they have the correct EMV compliant hardware, and by providing the expert guidance and support needed to ensure even the newest merchants can get their online systems up and running with ease. 

While they’re getting set up with Apple Pay, BAMS merchants can also begin accepting Samsung Pay and Google Pay, two of the other top contactless payment options on the market serving Android users. In addition to these great payment options, BAMS merchants enjoy the guaranteed lowest fees in the industry thanks to our interchange-plus pricing model – the most transparent and low-cost pricing model available. 

If you’re ready to find out more about how BAMS can help you get started with Apple Pay, or if you have questions regarding any of the merchant services, reach out to a member of the BAMS team today, or get started with a free BAMS five-point price comparison