Apple’s Passbook Could Be A Platform, Not Just Another Mobile Payments Rival
At this week’s WWDC, Apple introduced a new application called “Passbook,” meant to function as an organizer for all your passes. It supports store cards, gift cards and coupons out of the gate, replacing their plastic counterparts, and providing an Apple-approved way to get consumers paying at checkout with their mobile phones. At first glance, it seems that Passbook’s launch is bad news for mobile wallet players like Square, PayPal, and others.But it might actually represent an opportunity for everybody else.
Besides the gee-whiz factor of having scannable cards organized in a pretty interface within the iPhone, the most interesting thing about Passbook is that the digital cards are able to make use of the iPhone’s geolocation capabilities. “When you get to the movie theater, your ticket automatically pops up on the lockscreen,” explained Scott Forstall, Apple’s SVP for iPhone software, demonstrating how a Fandago movie ticket in action.
“So if I have my phone locked, and I go to my favorite Starbucks, up comes my Starbucks card,” Forstall said, showing off the Starbucks Card integration, “slide across it, brings up my card, scan, pay for my coffee and I’m out.”
For now, the cards feature scannable barcodes, much like the standalone Starbucks app available in the app store does today. And after you scan your Passbook ”card” via the store’s barcode reader, the balance immediately updates and the change is reflected in the digital card within the app.
Passbook’s Location-Based Feature Sounds A Lot Like Square!
What jumped into my mind, however, when Forstall talked about the location-based features of Passbook – the way cards are triggered to launch as you walk into various stores – is how much this feature resembles Square’s “Pay with Square” application (formerly known as “Square Card Case”). For this reason, some may speculate that Passbook will eventually morph into a mobile wallet, and therefore, a “Square killer.”
For background: this year, Square introduced a hands-free payment feature in its iOS app which allowed users to opt-in to a geofencing feature in the app that was triggered when you and your phone were within 100 meters of a Square merchant. The feature is not necessarily obvious to new users. By default, you must launch your “tab” in the Square merchant’s card, then you can say your name at checkout to pay via Square without handing over your credit card to the merchant.
Passbook’s Location-Based Feature Sounds A Lot Like Square!
What jumped into my mind, however, when Forstall talked about the location-based features of Passbook – the way cards are triggered to launch as you walk into various stores – is how much this feature resembles Square’s “Pay with Square” application (formerly known as “Square Card Case”). For this reason, some may speculate that Passbook will eventually morph into a mobile wallet, and therefore, a “Square killer.”
For background: this year, Square introduced a hands-free payment feature in its iOS app which allowed users to opt-in to a geofencing feature in the app that was triggered when you and your phone were within 100 meters of a Square merchant. The feature is not necessarily obvious to new users. By default, you must launch your “tab” in the Square merchant’s card, then you can say your name at checkout to pay via Square without handing over your credit card to the merchant.
However, if you choose to opt-in to geofencing, you can configure Square to open your favorite merchant tabs automatically by toggling the “Auto-open Tab” setting to “On” within each merchant’s card. Enabling this feature merchant-by-merchant is a bit tedious for Square users, though; Apple’s solution of lockscreen alerts is much more elegant. And of course, this is because of Apple’s ability to integrate its own application deeply in the OS. In fact, Forstall said this repeatedly during the presentation: Passbook integrates.
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