READY TO TAP: No new hardware needed to add ePort machines as Apple Pay points

“Certification work” with Apple was all that was needed to add 200,000 vending and other self-service machines supplied over the last five years to the list of Apple Pay acceptance points, USA Technologies (USAT) has told NFC World+.

No new hardware has been needed to add the machines to the list of Apple Pay acceptance points — almost doubling the number of places the NFC mobile payments service can be used — Maeve Duska, VP of marketing at supplier USAT, explained.

“Particularly over the last five years, most of the hardware that we’ve been selling has been NFC-ready so the good news for our customers and for us is that, at this point, we have nearly 200,000 NFC-ready acceptance points that are already out there,” she says.

“You have to have our ePort hardware in place and be on our service, but if you already have an NFC-ready ePort then there is nothing special that you need to do [to accept Apple Pay], you are already ready.

“We did some certification work with Apple to ensure this was true,” Duska added. “We worked with Apple and, as far as I know, we are the only company in this particular unattended space that has specific approval from Apple to use the Apple Pay brand on their machines.

DUSKA: “Certification work” with Apple

“We did work with them to get some decals created that we are actively sending to our customers who already have machines out in the market, so consumers can look for that Apple Pay logo and know that they can use Apple Pay.

“The good news is it’s immediately available in all of these locations. Because they already have the NFC capability built-in, and because Apple chose to go the route of NFC and to capitalise on some of the infrastructure that was already in place, those 200,000 locations can immediately accept the Apple Pay wallet.

“From a consumer perspective, if you have the Apple Pay wallet on your phone right now and you’ve downloaded a card to it, it’s very likely that you’ll come across our technology in your everyday travels and you’ll be able to use that wallet for some of those everyday purchases that you make.

“As we continue to sell hardware, obviously we’re still aggressively and actively selling our services to the market, that number will continue to increase over time.

“What USA Technologies wants to make sure is that we enable consumers to be able to use whatever their favourite payment mechanism is.

“So, if we have a consumer that prefers Softcard then they can use their Softcard wallet. If we have a consumer that prefers Apple Pay they can use that and, similarly, if folks want to stick with credit, debit cards, traditional magnetic stripe cards, we can accept those as well. For us, it’s really about making sure that any customers who walks by one of our machines can make a purchase.”

“Softcard continues to be accepted at the terminals as well and now, with Apple Pay in the mix, Apple Pay is added to the list of mobile wallets that can be accepted,” Duska confirmed.