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A Really Dumb Wall Street Journal Story on Apple Pay That Almost Makes a Good Point at the Very Beginning

Tuesday, 3 April 2018

Tripp Mickle, writing for The Wall Street Journal:

Apple Inc. is nagging iPhone users to enroll in its mobile-paymentservice with a persistent red circle badge. The strategy hasworked with some, but is irritating others who say it isheavy-handed and exploits the tech giant’s clout in ways thatcould disadvantage rivals.

The tactic, part of the iPhone’s latest operating softwarelaunched last fall, is subtle. Users who opt not to inputcredit-card information for Apple Pay when setting up their phonesnow constantly see the red circle over their settings icon,indicating their setup is incomplete. Some users also periodicallyget notification reminders that go away only once they start theenrollment process.

Mickle has a point here. This does annoy people who, for whatever reason, don’t want to set up Apple Pay.There is a way to dismiss the red badge, but it’s not obvious how, because the button you have to tap says “Set Up Apple Pay”. (After that, you tap “Cancel” or “Set Up Later in Wallet”.) It is inscrutably counterintuitive to need to tap a button that says “Set Up Apple Pay” when your intention is to stop being nagged to set it up because youdon’t want to set up Apple Pay.

But the Journal article never explains that you can turn off this red badge. As Mickle tells it, the only way to turn off the badge is to sign up for Apple Pay. That’s just wrong, and renders the remainder of his article moot.

In act 2, the article turns weird:

Though payment analysts say the service speeds up checkout timesand is more secure than traditional cards, Apple Pay has struggledto earn broad adoption in the U.S. Many remain skeptical that itis more secure, including Jack Frederick, a 29-year-oldprofessional comedian from Queens, N.Y., who prefers using hiscredit card directly.

“This is the most aggressive they’ve ever been,” said Mr.Frederick, who has had a red badge over his iPhone settings sinceupdating his software in mid-January. He said the notification hasmade him consider trading his iPhone 6 for a Google Pixel. “Allthat from one dot,” he said.

Experts say using Apple Pay is faster and more secure than using a credit card, but here’s a 29-year-old comedian who thinks otherwise. Who wouldn’t take credit card security advice from a completely random guy on the street?

I do think Apple has a marketing problem with Apple Pay, though. I can tell from talking to family members that a lot of people just don’t see why they should try Apple Pay, because they have no idea how it works or why they’d want to use it. And I think they worry that because it’s new and sort of science-fiction-y it will make their credit cardmore likely to be hacked, when the truth is the opposite. I think Apple needs more ads that explain and demonstrate the convenience and indisputable security advantages of using Apple Pay instead of a credit card, and the extraordinary convenience of Apple Pay Cash. I can see how a lot of people think, “Eh, I’ll just keep using my credit card” when they’re paying for something in a retail store. But Apple Pay Cash could be enough to get these people to set up Apple Pay.

Anyway, in act three, Mickle takes things to the absurd:

“Everyone is doing essentially the same trick,” said Roger Kay, ananalyst with Endpoint Technologies Associates. “It’s reallyantitrust behavior.”

Mr. Kay compared Apple Pay setup badges and notifications toMicrosoft Corp. bundling its Internet Explorer browser withWindows in the 1990s — a strategy the Justice Departmentsuccessfully sued to stop on antitrust grounds saying it hurtrivals. “They used to have actual behavioral remedies and say youcan’t do this,” Mr. Kay said.

This is a ridiculous comparison in several ways, but I’ll point out just one. With the benefit of 20 years of hindsight, it’s now clear that one aspect of Microsoft’s defense was correct: web browsers do belong built into operating systems at the system level.Good luck removing Safari from MacOS or iOS. I wish you even better luck removing Chrome from a Chromebook.

Netscape didn’t lose to IE because IE was built into Windows; it lost because IE was better. And when first Firefox and then Chrome came along, they thrived on Windows because they were better than IE.

Apple Pay, as conceived, has to be built into the OS. By Kay’s argument, most of the built-in features inany OS are anticompetitive. What new featurescould be added to iOS without hurting some sort ofcompetitor?

Apple declined to comment on potential antitrust concerns.

Probably because they were stifling laughter.

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