From their website:
"Plastc Inc., this website and the products and/or services offered on this website are neither endorsed, nor sponsored by, nor affiliated with, the above-referenced banking/financial institutions and/or retailers. Each of Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Charles Schwab, Citi, Chase, Bank of America, US Bank, Wells Fargo, and Apple are registered trademarks of their respective owners and this website does not endorse or sponsor any such trademarks or their respective owners."
Interesting that the list of banks is nearly the same as that of ApplePay. I'm glad there are some forward-thinking enough banks willing to push technology forward.
Implementing Apple Pay isn't a technical feat. There's a standard for it.[1] As long as the banks let you access their token generation service, it's straightforward. However, I haven't heard of anyone other than Apple getting that permission. It'll happen soon enough, but the chances that these guys are the first seems slim to me.
I think it might be a bit of a misrepresentation. They will have their own 3rd party payment service ala paypal but you will be able to use the card to decide which payment method associated with that account gets used.
Just a guess! but it would avoid some pretty massive technical hurdles to international acceptance.
As far as the current public information goes, Apple Pay tokenizes your credit/debit card and uses that to pay, which means your bank processes the payment. Apple won't process the payments themselves.
The card connects to your iPhone (for proximity detection) perhaps the card accesses Apple Pay on your phone when making the transaction therefore your phone needs to be in your pocket while inputting the chip and pin? Just a thought.
My point was that there are banks that will never adopt new technologies, then there's the likes of AmEx, Chase, Wells Fargo, etc, who have now signed on to two different (and to a certain extent, competing) technologies that they don't have to adopt, only because it pushes the industry forward.
But yeah, they obviously found a way to implement ApplePay - hell, Apple probably did it for them.
Question is what exactly does "participating" means.
Banks generally hate anything that takes away their branding. Less sleek of this -- i.e. reprogrammable Visa cards -- have been around for a few years but banks never supported them, again because of branding.
It looks like it displays the logo, so it isn't out of the question for banks (now starting to be scared at being disintermediated) to maybe throw in some "support" (aka tepidly allow access). After all, apple pay also reduces branding (and Apple takes a cut), and threatens a lot of the industry as what you pay with becomes a minor manner (and also massively encourages a single default card).
Does Apple Pay actually reduce branding that much? I bet I'm not the only one who saw the Apple Pay demo and noticed that it displays a nice, large, full-color image of the card being used. Cards with a certain cachet, then (AmEx black, other high-end cards) will still be quite prominently displayed. Indeed, a backlit display might even make more of a brand impression than the physical card, in some situations.
I also am not certain that Apple Pay "massively encourages" a single default card. It looked quite easy in the demo to display multiple cards and switch between them. Looked easier than taking a card out of a crowded wallet and putting it back in, actually.
Eh, as far as default goes, it is another step; the second page of google results is easy to get too, but people don't. Part of what generates alternate card usage today is the messy wallet, sometimes the card isn't in the right place, or doesn't come to hand.
Also there are some practical in RL issues that come up with most NFC payment readers (namely a lot of the installed readers have short range, and awkward pad placement) which makes non default much less attractive.
As for the display issue, the issuers concern is that they are pretty limited as far as making things distinct. I mean hell, every card company is going to have black cards. There are no sideways cards, no premium materials, no metallics, etc. They have a relatively small image, which has to still look good even if cropped to lose the bottom 80%. Basically they get space for bank logo, card logo, and a non distracting background.
So if they are willing to give up on all that and a fee, it doesn't seem all that out of the question for them to allow their logos to be used on a flexible card, and (presumably) not pay a fee.
The transaction fees and 15% interest they collect on your charges is probably more important than branding, though, and they'll still get that with this.
Same for loyalty cards. Commercants are eager to give you a card or an app because the want to be seen all the time in your wallet/mobile and you have to carry it around. They probably wouldn't see the point if they're stored away in a virtual list.
