Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s Mobile Wallet Awakens Competition

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s new mobile payment service, Apple Pay, is reportedly a success. The company may already have declared it a victory, but the war for mobile payments is only just beginning. Competition will soon step up their game. They will want to gain their share in the mobile market and at least one other company will introduce their own mobile wallet service.

CTO of Vibes, John Haro, said that presently, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is the only company who are succeeding in the mobile wallet services. However, this will not be the case forever. The company would love to acquire 100% market share in the mobile wallet services, but that is not possible; competition will step up.

Last week, the biggest competitors of the Apple Pay service were the retailers themselves apparently. Merchant Customers Exchange (MCX) is a group of retailers, who are working on developing a mobile wallet. This service will be called CurrentC, and will be rolled out in the next fiscal. Some members of MCX had disabled their support for the Apple Pay at the stores. The reason is that members of the MCX are exclusively required to do so.

On Wednesday, MCX announced that the beta version of CurrentC has been breached. Some third party had participated in the breach and had stolen some emails from the users. Haro said that the incident at CurrentC was an unfortunate one for them. Some backlash existed due to the disabling of Apple Pay by some retailers but this security breach will prove to be a setback. In the domain of CurrentC, security is extremely important, and this breach proves the inability of CurrentC to secure itself.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) will face more competition. PayPal and Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) already have mobile wallets in the market. These companies are picking up the pace to find their space in the domain of mobile wallets. Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) may even launch an advertisement for the Google Wallet.

Marketing will definitely gain the attention of users, however, consumers will choose a mobile payment service depending upon their choice of mobiles. It depends on the kind of customer. An iPhone user will obviously opt for the Apple Pay. However, if you are an Android user, then in order to use the Apple Pay service, you will need to switch phones, OS, in short, the mobile ecosystem.

While Google Wallet and other mobile wallets are available for both iOS and Android Platforms, the Apple Pay can only be used by iPhone 6 users. This little fact will definitely give the competition an edge. However, Apple Pay has its perks as well, which is why it remains in the lead.

The reasons why Apple Pay is getting so much attraction are that it offers security and is very convenient to use. The users are not required to open an app to use Apple Pay. The user just holds his iPhone 6 near the reader and places his finger to the touch ID. Voila! Transaction is complete!