Starbucks supports WeChat payment. The most worried person is Apple Pay?

"Starbucks is the only place I use Apple Pay. I am afraid it will be completely unemployed..."

When my colleagues saw Starbucks starting to support the news of WeChat payment, they sent out the above feelings. Since Apple?Pay officially entered China at the beginning of the year, Starbucks has become the preferred place for iPhone users to pay for their mobile phones.

On the one hand, Starbucks clerk's understanding of Apple Pay is indeed the highest among all chain stores, and you can make a smooth payment without any effort. But more importantly, in the past, Starbucks has not supported the "scan code payment" represented by WeChat and Alipay. If you want to use mobile payment, you can only use Apple Pay or other "flash payment" channels.

The use of Apple Pay at Starbucks is both for "carrying" and the only option when not wearing a wallet. But from now on, this situation will change.

2,500 stores access WeChat payment

Today (December 8th), Tencent and Starbucks jointly announced that WeChat Payment will connect to Starbucks' nearly 2,500 stores in mainland China, which can achieve “sweeping code” like other offline consumption scenarios, bidding farewell to past cumbersome cash and credit card signatures. The way, greatly improving the efficiency of customer pay and store cashier.

I believe that no more customers will ask if they will pay for WeChat payment in the future, because you will see the familiar green bubble when you queue up for payment. According to the information obtained by Geek Park, in addition to convenient payment methods, the two parties will jointly launch a social gift experience early next year.

"Starbucks will be the first retail brand in China to launch a social heart-to-heart delivery experience on WeChat. Based on the social attributes of WeChat, Chinese customers can choose a rich and varied Starbucks gift, and add special when sharing with friends. Sending blessings such as words, and more convenient for your own expressions. These minds and memories will remain in each other's WeChat account, and can be exchanged at Starbucks stores at any time to enjoy the unique Starbucks experience and truly realize the digital sharing of mind sharing. Socialize."

In short, it is a star gift card that needs to be sent to a friend by express. It can be sent directly via WeChat. It can be seen that in addition to cooperation on the payment channel, the two parties also intend to combine social and payment, but the specific form of expression will not be seen until early next year.

Is WeChat payment or Apple Pay?

We compare WeChat payments with Apple Pay because they represent two different genres in the mobile payment space. With the payment methods such as Apple Pay and Samsung Pay entering China, the discussion about scanning code payment and contactless payment (NFC) has not stopped.

In fact, Apple Pay is superior in terms of ease of use. WeChat payment requires several steps of “Open WeChat—I—wallet—payment”, and Apple Pay can just double-click the Home button or directly close to the POS to unlock it. The whole process can be “blind operation”. However, the use of Apple Pay is inseparable from the support of NFC POS, which brings the problem of popularity.

Although the acceptance of NFC payments has increased a lot since the beginning of the year, the penetration rate is still far behind the scan code payment – ​​nowadays even a small sweet potato cart will be attached with a payment QR code. It is a goal that various Pay can never achieve.

The two payment methods are indistinguishable and have achieved rapid development this year. According to public data, WeChat payment has covered more than 30 million offline stores in more than 30 industries; this year more and more mobile phone manufacturers are beginning to push NFC payments, and even extend their reach to the public transportation sector (such as Xiaomi Payment already Support Beijing bus card).

Behind the two mobile payment methods is the game between the third-party payment license and the central bank and China UnionPay, which is also mixed with the interests of mobile phone manufacturers and payment institutions. For more in-depth content, you can refer to the geek park's article "The Post-Licensing Era, the Shuffle and Breakthrough of Third-Party Payments".

However, a "point of view" after Starbucks supports WeChat payment is that when the scanning code payment no longer needs to be promoted by various preferential policies, when contactless payment (NFC) is no longer the only option for "loading", The competition between the two payment methods really begins.

So the question is, the next time you go to Starbucks to pay by mobile phone, will you pay with WeChat or Apple Pay?