Re: @DougS @Vector
> What is Apple's compelling case to the merchant that will overcome losing access to all that nifty marketing data?
I imagine something like:
1. Our customers are reasonably affluent consumers who are persuaded by slick marketing to pay premium prices for products that are in many respects not as good as their less expensive competitors. In other words, our customers are the sort of high margin people that you want to attract into your business with this complimentary "we welcome Apple Pay here" sign.
2. Our customers can pay using their phones. They like to do this, coz we've made it look cool and it gives them warm, fuzzy feelings of living in some sort of scifi future. They choose to make purchases in stores where they can do this, and avoid stores where they can't (look, we have some research to prove it!). Moreover, x% of our customers no longer carry any other means of payment.
3. If you don't support this technology, you can't reach our affluent high-margin easily-susceptible customers - but your competitors will. You'll lose.
4. Besides, who said you need to lose access to that marketing data? By becoming an Apple Approved Retail Partner (only £250k per annum registration fee, plus an additional 0.5% per transaction), we'll furnish you with all the data you want.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
