So Black Friday happened yesterday, and I did the thing I told myself I wouldn't do, which is get up before sunrise and stand in a CVS line to buy basically nothing (a phone charger and a pack of gum, if you're curious) just so I could actually try Apple Pay somewhere that wasn't my own kitchen counter.
Quick recap for anyone who's been ignoring their phone: Apple Pay showed up about five weeks ago now, October 20th, tied to iOS 8.1 and the 6 and 6 Plus. I've had it going since day one and mostly used it for coffee and the odd Walgreens run, and it's been genuinely nice: tap, thumbprint, done, no fumbling for a card. Whole Foods takes it. Panera takes it. Macy's, Bloomingdale's, Staples, Subway, Toys R Us, all in. So going into the biggest shopping day of the year I figured I'd basically never need my wallet.
CVS had other plans.
I get to the register, tap my phone against the terminal like I've done a hundred times, and nothing happens. The little contactless symbol isn't even lit up. Cashier looks at me like I'm trying to pay with a rock and says "we don't do that here anymore," which, first of all, past tense is doing a lot of work in that sentence because CVS terminals used to support NFC tap-to-pay just fine before this. Turns out CVS (and Rite Aid too, I found out later when a friend told me the same thing happened to her) straight up disabled the contactless readers a few weeks back. Not just for Apple Pay — Google Wallet, all of it. Because both chains are part of this retailer consortium called MCX that's building their own payment app called CurrentC, and apparently the deal they signed locks them into exclusivity, so they'd rather turn off hardware that already works than let you use a competitor's app on it.
And CurrentC isn't even out yet. It's still in some limited pilot phase, and (this is the part that really got me) a bunch of the pilot testers had their email addresses leaked a few weeks back when someone broke into the CurrentC servers. So the app that doesn't exist for the public yet already has a breach on its resume. I'm not a security person, I just write a blog, but that seems like a bad sign to lead with.
Anyway I paid with the physical card like an animal, got my charger and my gum, and went to Walgreens across the street for coffee where Apple Pay worked instantly, which honestly felt like it was making a point on purpose.
Here's my actual opinion on this, since apparently I have one: I don't think CurrentC is going to win. Not because the tech is necessarily worse (I haven't used it, nobody outside the pilot has), but because the whole pitch depends on retailers being annoyed enough at credit card swipe fees that they'll inconvenience their own customers to avoid paying them, and customers just don't care about swipe fees. Customers care about whether the thing at the register works when they tap it. Apple Pay works. That's the entire product. A payment method that's slower and requires you to scan a QR code (which is reportedly how CurrentC is supposed to function, near as I can tell) is not going to beat "hold phone near thing."
I did notice something else standing in that CVS line for twenty extra seconds sorting out my card, the guy behind me had four rolls of wrapping paper and was checking his phone the whole time, and I'd bet real money he had no idea any of this was happening. Most people aren't reading tech blogs at 6am on Black Friday. They just want the line to move. Which, fair.
I don't know if CVS and Rite Aid change course before the holidays really kick into gear. Be curious to see if the returns lines in a couple weeks are full of people just as confused as I was about why their phone doesn't work at the counter anymore. If you're doing Black Friday deals-hunting through the weekend and you're relying on Apple Pay to skip the wallet, maybe double check the store first. Save yourself the look the cashier gives you.