Apple Pay的海外扩张道阻且长

在Apple Pay席卷美国之后的18个月里，这家智能手机巨头在海外遭遇了技术上的挑战，面临着消费者使用率低的问题，还受到了银行的抵制，这使得他们在全球支付市场只赢得了微小的份额。

最近几周，苹果在新加坡的唯一合作伙伴除了美国运通之外又增加了四家银行，在澳大利亚获得了澳新银行集团的支持，在加拿大又兼容了另外五家银行。截至目前，这项服务可以在六个国家使用，支持的银行范围仍然十分有限。

去年，通过Apple Pay产生的交易额为109亿美元，大部分来自美国。根据研究公司Timetric的数据，这比率先使用移动支付的小国肯尼亚的年交易额还要少。

而其全球交易量相对中国而言，更是沧海一粟。在中国这个全球最大的移动支付市场，互联网巨头阿里巴巴和腾讯占据了统治地位。iResearch的数据显示，他们的移动端交易额估计高达1万亿美元。

英国、中国和澳大利亚的事实都表明，Apple Pay应该会在苹果的铁杆粉丝之间流行起来。但Apple Pay的服务质量，以及用户对它的兴趣却出现了巨大的差异。

消费者在支付终端前点击iPhone，就能用Apple Pay来购买咖啡、火车票和其他服务。它还可以用于支持非接触支付的自动售货机。

在截至今年3月的6个月时间里，iPhone的销售额达到了845亿美元，占苹果总收入的三分之二，而Apple Pay的交易额只有它的一小部分。

技术问题

一个月前，Apple Pay登陆了澳大利亚。这里的支付终端由一家中等规模的银行提供支持，它们时常报错。

这家银行的发言人对路透社表示：“本迪戈银行（Bendigo Bank）在接受Apple Pay的特定商业终端机上，遇到了预料之外的技术问题。”她补充道，由于在推出这项服务时对该行业的了解不够深入广泛，所以测试这项新技术的准备期十分有限。

苹果的副总裁珍妮佛•贝利表示，这种情况是准备不足所致，不具备代表性。她说：“就像其他任何大规模的技术变革一样，这需要时间。我们希望尽快推出服务，我们尽可能快地推动着这一进程。”

面对着智能手机业务增长缓慢的境况，苹果想要借助支付市场提高公司产品的吸引力，同时创造更多收入来源。在美国，通过Apple Pay每花费100美元，苹果就能获得最高15美分的收入。

尽管苹果长期以来一直控制着移动产品的供应链，但事实证明，控制支付行业的生态体系难度更高。据说，其他国家的银行要求苹果降低手续费，这也是Apple Pay在全球进展缓慢，部分原因也在于此。

从2013年至2015年，苹果投入的研发费用几乎翻番，达到了80亿美元以上。这期间，他们推出了苹果手表（Apple Watch）和Apple Pay等一系列新产品，还升级了现有的硬件设备和新服务。

阻力

苹果利用了美国巨大的用户基数来推广Apple Pay，但是在澳大利亚、英国和加拿大，当地银行已经推出了自身的产品，这给苹果带来了阻力。

First Annapolis Consulting的分析师约书亚•吉尔伯特表示：“总之，支付市场的体系十分复杂，现有的服务提供商很多，像这样的革命性改变不太可能迅速实现。”

所以，苹果正在一点一滴地推动着Apple Pay，慢慢增加支持它的国家和合作伙伴——下一个可能是中国香港——但是，这导致了支付格局的混乱，用户和零售店员不能肯定哪些产品可以使用，应当如何使用。

例如，据Juniper Research的分析师温莎•霍尔登所说，去年在英国通过非接触式卡消费的金额为140亿美元。因此，让人们再去使用手机来完成同样方便的付款流程，就变得更加困难。

霍尔登表示：“当前在流通的非接触式卡已经有8,600万张，英国人已经可以用这些卡进行非接触支付了。你现在还得劝说他们在Apple Pay上注册这些卡。”

在澳大利亚，超过60%的银行卡交易都是通过非接触式卡完成的。因此，Apple Pay同样不温不火。一家大型零售商的发言人表示，他在自己的部门看见“几乎没有人采用这种支付方式”。他不愿透露姓名，因为他还没有得到授意在公开场合谈论此事。

迭戈•马丘卡今年32岁，他使用的是不支持Apple Pay的澳洲联邦银行。他有一部iPhone，已经“很大程度上实现了无现金生活”。他表示，Apple Pay很吸引人，但他不会为了这个功能就去换一家银行。在接受路透社采访时他表示：“不值得。为了这个点击支付的功能，我得去做很多事。”

在Apple Pay登陆中国的三个月以后，在线论坛上的用户抱怨道，即便是在流行的快餐店，使用Apple Pay也不如本土的微信支付那样无缝。后者是腾讯推出的信息和移动商务应用。

尽管如此，苹果做出的努力还是让Apple Pay在一些移动支付行业并未提前占领的市场得到了发展。这让他们在与对手谷歌的安卓支付和三星支付的竞争中占得了先机。

安卓支付今年3月登陆了美国，上个月登陆了英国。这两个国家最新款的安卓手机用户才可以使用该功能。三星支付则进入了三个市场：中国、韩国和美国。

译者：严匡正

More than 18 months after Apple Pay took the United States by storm, the smartphone giant has made only a small dent in the global payments market, snagged by technical challenges, low consumer take-up and resistance from banks.

The service is available in six countries and among a limited range of banks, though in recent weeks Applehas added four banks to its sole Singapore partner American Express; Australia and New Zealand Banking Group in Australia; and Canada’s five big banks.

Apple Pay usage totaled $10.9 billion last year, the vast majority of that in the United States. That is less than the annual volume of transactions in Kenya, a mobile payments pioneer, according to research firm Timetric.

And its global turnover is a drop in the bucket in China, where Internet giants Alibaba and Tencent dominate the world’s biggest mobile payments market – with an estimated $1 trillion worth of mobile transactions last year, according to iResearch data.

Anecdotal evidence from Britain, China and Australia suggests Apple Pay is popular with coreApplefollowers, but the quality of service, and interest in it, varies significantly.

To use Apple Pay, consumers tap their iPhone over payment terminals to buy coffee, train tickets and other services. It can be also used at vending machines that accept contactless payments.

Apple Pay transactions were a fraction of the $84.5 billion in iPhone sales for the six months to March, which accounted for two-thirds of Apple‘s total revenue.

TECH HITCHES

In Australia, where Apple Pay launched a month ago, payment machines supported by one mid-sized bank reported frequent failures.

“Bendigo Bank is experiencing some unforeseen technical issues in accepting Apple Pay payments at selected merchant terminals,” a spokeswoman for the bank told Reuters, adding that a lack of wider industry engagement in launching the service limited the lead time in testing the new technology.

Apple vice president Jennifer Bailey said such experiences were premature and not representative. “Like any set of major technology changes, it takes time,” she said. “We want to move as quickly as possible, we push it as quickly as possible.”

Facing a slowing smartphone business, Apple has taken on the payments market hoping to add ways to make its devices more appealing, and more revenue streams. Apple AAPL -1.45% takes a cut of up to 15 cents in the United States on every $100 spent.

While it has long mastered the supply chain for its mobile devices, the payments ecosystem has proved harder to control, and banks in other countries have reportedly negotiated lower transaction fees, contributing to its slow global roll-out.

Apple nearly doubled its R&D spending to more than $8 billion in 2013-15 as it pushed out a wave of new products including Apple Watch and Apple Pay, as well as upgrades to existing hardware devices and new services.

RESISTANCE

Apple has leveraged its huge U.S. user base to push Pay, but has met resistance in Australia, Britain and Canada where banks are building their own products.

“Payments in general is such a complicated system with so many incumbent providers that revolutionary change like this was not going to happen very quickly,” said Joshua Gilbert, an analyst at First Annapolis Consulting.

The upshot: Apple has rolled out Pay in a dribble, adding countries and partners where it can – Hong Kong is expected to be added next – resulting in an uneven banking landscape with users and retail staff not always sure what will work and how.

In Britain, for example, $14 billion was spent via contactless cards last year, according to Windsor Holden, a Juniper Research analyst. That makes it harder to persuade people to take the extra step on their smartphone for the same checkout convenience.

“You have over 86 million contactless cards in circulation, you have to persuade Britons to register their cards to the (Apple Pay) service when they can already use them to make a contactless payment,” Holden said.

In Australia, where more than 60% of all card transactions are through contactless cards, reception has also been muted. A spokesman for one large retailer said he had seen “very little uptake of the payment option” in his sector. He didn’t want to be named as he was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

Diego Machuca, 32, banks with Apple Pay-holdout Commonwealth Bank, has an iPhone and is already “largely cashless.” He says Apple Pay is appealing, but he wouldn’t switch banks just to access that one feature. “Not over that. There’s too much work involved just for tap-and-go,” he told Reuters.

Three months after the China launch, users on online forums complained that using Apple Pay, even at popular fast-food outlets, was not as seamless as local services such as WeChat, Tencent’s messaging and mobile commerce phenomenon.

Nonetheless, Apple‘s approach has spurred development in several markets where the mobile payments industry had previously not taken hold – giving it the jump on rivals Google’s Android Pay and Samsung Pay.

Android Pay only launched in the United States in March and in Britain last month for use on the latest model Android phones. Samsung Pay is available in three markets; China, South Korea and the United States.