John Gruber, Retailers Are Disabling NFC to Block Apple Pay:
What Apple gets and what no one else in the industry does is that using your mobile device for payments will only work if it’s far easier and better than using a credit card. With CurrentC, you’ll have to unlock your phone, launch their app, point your camera at a QR code, and wait. With Apple Pay, you just take out your phone and put your thumb on the Touch ID sensor.
CurrentC sounds terrible. Gruber thinks it’ll be futile. I say DOA for a few reasons, not the least of which is CurrentC stores your financial information in the cloud.
I think a notably growing number of people will use Apple’s list of Apple-Pay-compatible retailers (scroll near the bottom) to guide more of their purchases. Come to think of it, Apple should make that list accessible in Passbook and bookmark-able on the web.
People are more concerned about their security and privacy than you might think, especially when it comes to their finances. I’ve been asking around at retailers that have recently experienced highly publicized breaches. It’s on the public’s mind, at least here in the U.S.