U.S. media believes Apple Pay promotion setbacks, the outlook is not clear

Apple Pay is an NFC based mobile payment feature, released on 2014 Apple's new autumn news conference, officially launched October 20 local time. The US "Forbes" website December 22 article said that the function has not been successful as the initial commitment to become the mobile payment industry leader, Apple pay is currently not high real usage, the popularity of its face difficulties, the prospects are not clear.

Apple pay now accounts for only 1.7% of the market after six weeks of release, according to a report released by market research agency ITG22 Day. The popularity of Apple's pay payment function is facing many problems.

The article argues that the first issue facing Apple's pay is device limitations. Apple pay currently supports only the latest batch of devices such as IPHONE6/6 Plus and the ipad Air2. Apple users have a product update cycle of about 1.5 to two years, many contract users wait until the end of the contract will not change the mobile phone, which means that the next round of new machine buying the fastest wave will have to wait until early next year.

In addition, mobile operating system site is now more than the share of Android and iOS, so that Android users because of a payment function to switch to the Apple system is not realistic, and iPhone6 compared to 5S is not a stunning upgrade, so a short period of time Apple Pay market share will not usher in a more substantial growth.

In addition to the above, another challenge is the difficulty of getting retailers to update their hardware to support Apple Pay. In order for stores to support Apple Pay, businesses need to set up near-field communications (NFC) sensors in their stores and add new security for their readers, which will take at least a few months and bring about 40 dollars in upgrades. In the current situation, retailers are unlikely to do so.

Not so long ago, the famous office supplies seller Staples (Stamples) accepted the Apple Pay, but the company immediately exposed a large number of data leaked news. This has left outsiders sceptical about the security of Apple's pay.

Meanwhile, Apple pay is not without rivals. In addition to the Google Wallet of old rivals Google, the mobile Payments Network Alliance MCX (Merchantcustomerexchange) and its mobile payment tool CurrentC, led by the US retail giant Wal-Mart, are aggressive: under the agreement, Members must support only the CurrentC mobile payment system, which has also led some businesses to disable the NFC Cashier terminal, making Apple Pay unusable. According to the 2013 data, MCX's member companies already have about 70, 110,000 retail outlets, which leaves Apple Pay with a turnover of more than 1 trillion dollars a year.

CurrentC will land in the market early next year. If the market responds well, the alliance will naturally spare no effort to promote it, which is not good for Apple. If consumers don't buy it, some may be switching to Apple Pay, but that will not happen in the next few months.

From this point of view, Apple pay only a small slice of the pie, and 2015 could not be reversed, Forbes said. Apple pay want to sweep the U.S. market, it has to change throughout the 2015, so it is possible to significantly increase market share in early 2016. However, the current situation, the development trend is not clear.