Apple Pay Doing Great, According to Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) CEO Tim Cook

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By Thomas Copeland on October 28, 2014 Technology & Software

Talking about Apple Pay at the WSJDLive conference held at California’s Laguna Beach, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) CEO Cook said that over a million credit cards had been activated with the mobile payment service in only a matter of 72 hours after its debut last Monday.

Debunking reports surfacing over the weekend, which had written off Apple Pay as a flopped system, Tim Cook, CEO at Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), said the mobile payment system has already exceeded expectations, becoming the most popular mobile payment system in history.

When asked about the sudden rejection of CVS (NYSE:CVS) and Rite-Aid (NYSE:RAD) from accepting Apple Pay this weekend, having initially accepted it for five days, Cook clarified that Rite-Aid (NYSE:RAD) as well as CVS (NYSE:CVS) were never officially accepting Apple Pay, having never expressly signed on to accept Apple Pay at their stores. The initial acceptance of the mobile payment system was possible due to availability of NFC technology at CVS (NYSE:CVS) and Rite-Aid (NYSE:RAD) stores, which accepted Apple Pay without any issue.

News reports surfaced last week that CVS (NYSE:CVS) and Rite-Aid (NYSE:RAD) had officially declined the acceptance of Apple Pay at their stores. According to market analysts, the move to distance themselves from the new mobile payment service is influenced by their parent company, Merchant Customer Exchange. MCE, which is the parent company of Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT), Best Buy (NYSE:BBY), CVS (NYSE:CVS), and Rite-Aid (NYSE:RAD), is developing its own mobile payment system called CurrentC, which is expected to launch in early 2015 on both Android OS and iOS.

However, these news reports have had no effect on Cook, who is highly confident about Apple Pay’s future as a popular method of payment at retail stores.

According to Cook, Apple Pay is “the first and only mobile payment system that’s easy, private and secure,” which makes it a powerful contender in the payment industry. When asked whether Apple Pay’s popularity will translate to its success, Cook said, “You are only relevant as a retailer or merchant if your customers love you.”

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) launched Apple Pay last Monday, providing it as an added feature in its iOS 8.1 update. The update, and Apple Pay, came on all iPhone 6 and 6 Plus models, allowing users to make payments with the new payment service at over 220,000 retail outlets all over the US. Apple Pay utilizes the TouchID feature of the iPhone 6 to verify the fingerprint of the user before releasing the payment via Apple Pay, making the payment service highly secure.

Apple Pay has been extensively promoted and focused upon by Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), having signed with six of the biggest issuers of credit cards (combined, these issuers make up over 83% of the overall credit-card transactions conducted in the US). The mobile payment service has also signed deals with Visa, Mastercard, and American Express.

Anticipating rapid growth in the next three to five years, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) bought back shares worth $17 billion in the last quarter, with an overall figure of $45 billion for the last fiscal year ending September.

There was already no doubt that Apple Pay would perform better than Google Wallet, which had come out in 2011.