The World After Coronavirus

[ChristianProgressive]

Oh, here's a couple of thoughts - we might see the end of cinemas, and at least some forms of printed media.

Some film studios are already starting to release their films online rather than at the cinema. If they find that that's a viable model, then they may not go back to the old model. And cinemas operate on a razor's edge of profit as it is, so this crisis may see many of them close. If that were to happen, that would exacerbate studios not returning to the cinemas, as fewer cinemas means fewer profits.

WRT print media comic manufacturers, at least, are ceasing production of physical copies and comic shops are either closed or are closing. Most comic shops are independent and likely cannot survive an extended closure. At the same time, if the comic companies learn that they can make just as much (or more) profit by distributing only digital copies, then they're unlikely to return to the old model. Again, this is especially true if the places where they can sell physical copies are more limited, and I imagine that some people who previously wouldn't have considered digital copies might take to them and not want to go back to physical ones. Perhaps a limited run only for collectors, which can be more expensive.

I've not heard anything yet about how papers or magazines are handling this, but physical sales have been declining for years and that will be even more true now. Again, if they find that they can make the same or more profit by having people subscribe to an app, or whatever, then they may abandon print all together.

To be clear, I don't think these things will disappear 100%, but I do think it's possible they may become far less prevalent.

The comic companies are hampered by hyper-fringe left creators who have forgotten or never learned how to write properly in the first place. But they'll work super cheap.

 

[Manger Douse]

"It's not that cash is illegal, you just couldn't do anything legal with it" William Gibson - Neuromancer [emoji102]

 

[William Parcher]

I suspect that China in particular took a much harder hit than they are admitting.

The coronavirus hit their cellphones really hard. At last count 21 million of those are dead with untold numbers still infected. Some people were putting them inside socks for protection but apparently it didn't help.

 

[arthwollipot]

In China it's pretty much ubiquitous already. People pay for everything with either WeChat or Alipay. And it's been that way for a couple of years now. I was actually a very late adopter.

One nice thing about WeChat wallet is that you can transfer money to friends with a click, which you can't do so easily with your bank card.

No, but I can do that very easily using the banking app on my phone. I do need your account number though.

 

[crescent]

My kids have tele-school starting today. Might run for a while.

Also, it might snow today. My son joked about wondering if they would get a snow day.

So I had a thought: No more snow days?? Ever??

I mean, if this distance learning/tele-school thing works, what's to prevent the school districts from planning to have the ability to do that for a few days each semester anyway, as a means to avoid snow days (or other events that disrupt school)?

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

One nice thing about WeChat wallet is that you can transfer money to friends with a click, which you can't do so easily with your bank card.

Yeah, you can do this with Apply Pay, too - but you can only give money to someone else who has Apple Pay. I can understand plenty of reasons why that might be the case, but it strikes me as something that they'll have to work out if they want to become truly ubiquitous or, at least, people's first choice.

Once an app that's available for all phone operating systems comes along, then Apple Pay will be obsolete. Why use Apple Pay to pay for goods and transfer money to friends who also have iPhones and use DifferentCashApp to transfer money to friends on Android, when you can just use DifferentCashApp to do the lot?

From my understanding of how the apps you mentioned work, though, Apple Pay is superior in one respect - setting them up requires faffing around with QR codes at the point of sale, and is seemingly most efficient if the shop has generating QR codes set up as an automatic process. Apple Pay requires nothing extra of most retailers, as it's exactly the same as using a contactless card. It does require extra software to exceed the contactless limit (and the banks can impose a limit on transactions), but all major retailers have had that software installed for years.

I think that anybody who launches an app that does the same thing as Apple Pay (and Google Pay, and Samsung Pay - imaginative names from the copycats there), but which works on any phone will corner the market overnight.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

No, but I can do that very easily using the banking app on my phone. I do need your account number though.

True, but it's even easier with Apple Pay. Assuming both of us have got an Apple Pay account, I can send you money via a text message. It's pretty much the same as sending an emoji.

I think the younger generation are going to find that a lot less hassle than fiddling about with giving each other their bank account details - especially as with AirDrop you can easily give your number to people without knowing their number, or even what your number is. It's literally just tapping your screen a couple of times.

 

[Sherkeu]

Geopolitics of Africa for the rest of the century might be decided by which Power helps the continent in this time of need.

I think parts of Africa are actually doing the helping right now. I'm not sure what kind of bartering is going on but I have been watching where the cargo is going and have noticed some odd stops.

Yesterday is was Togo and Mozambique, who have hardly any cases..the planes then went to hotspot areas. I think Africa is selling their stash. Maybe we return the favor when their numbers grow or they get cash/other goods. I'm sure the plane didnt go over empty.

eta: another odd one from yesterday was a Russian military cargo plane landing in Reno Nevada from Vladivostok, with stops in Japan and Anchorage (Anchorage is a common refueling stop for cargo which is mostly how I find them).

 

[Darat]

Yeah, you can do this with Apply Pay, too - but you can only give money to someone else who has Apple Pay. I can understand plenty of reasons why that might be the case, but it strikes me as something that they'll have to work out if they want to become truly ubiquitous or, at least, people's first choice.

Once an app that's available for all phone operating systems comes along, then Apple Pay will be obsolete. Why use Apple Pay to pay for goods and transfer money to friends who also have iPhones and use DifferentCashApp to transfer money to friends on Android, when you can just use DifferentCashApp to do the lot?

From my understanding of how the apps you mentioned work, though, Apple Pay is superior in one respect - setting them up requires faffing around with QR codes at the point of sale, and is seemingly most efficient if the shop has generating QR codes set up as an automatic process. Apple Pay requires nothing extra of most retailers, as it's exactly the same as using a contactless card. It does require extra software to exceed the contactless limit (and the banks can impose a limit on transactions), but all major retailers have had that software installed for years.

I think that anybody who launches an app that does the same thing as Apple Pay (and Google Pay, and Samsung Pay - imaginative names from the copycats there), but which works on any phone will corner the market overnight.

Google pay and Samsung Pay work like Apple Pay already.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Google pay and Samsung Pay work like Apple Pay already.

But not on iPhones, and you can't transfer money from them to any of the others. My point is that when there's an app that does exactly the same thing but which works on any phone then that'll surpass each of the native ones.

Say I've got an iPhone, my mother has an iPhone, and my brother has an Android. I want to give £10 to both my brother and my mother. I can just use Apple Pay to text that money to my mother, but I have to find some other way to give the money to my brother.

But say that DifferentCashApp launches and it's identical to Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay - except that you can install it on any phone. Now I can do everything that I can with Apple Pay and I can text £10 to my brother. So why wouldn't I do all my money transferring and POS purchases with DifferentCashApp rather than Apple Pay? Why would I use Apple Pay for some operations and then DifferentCashApp for those that I can't do with Apple Pay? Wouldn't it make more sense to just use the one app for everything?

That's what I mean - when a new app launches that does everything that the individual ones do, but which can be installed on any phone, then that'll be the end of the individual services.

I suspect that what may happen before then is that they'll get together and arrange protocols between them so that you can transfer money between any of the apps. Sort of like when cash machines first appeared you could only use a Lloyd's card in a Lloyd's machine, but banks soon realised that it was more advantageous to everybody to let any card be used in any machine.

Because surely the goal here if you're Apple, google, or Samsung is to have cash replaced with your respective apps? And that'll never truly happen if you can't transfer money from a google Pay account to an Apple Pay account. If granny can't give her grandson a tenner or if a dad can't send his daughter the taxi fare home because they've got different phones, then it'll never replace cash. And I'm sure that Apple, google, and Samsung understand this, and I'm also sure that they're realistic enough to know that they're never going to have 100% of the population using their products and nobody else's. And I'm sure that none of them want some third party app to drive them out of the market completely.

So I imagine that at some point they'll cooperate and make it possible for their apps to talk to each other. Whether or not it'll take a third party app coming along to give them the requisite kick up the arse remains to be seen.

 

[Roboramma]

Yeah, you can do this with Apply Pay, too - but you can only give money to someone else who has Apple Pay. I can understand plenty of reasons why that might be the case, but it strikes me as something that they'll have to work out if they want to become truly ubiquitous or, at least, people's first choice.

Once an app that's available for all phone operating systems comes along, then Apple Pay will be obsolete. Why use Apple Pay to pay for goods and transfer money to friends who also have iPhones and use DifferentCashApp to transfer money to friends on Android, when you can just use DifferentCashApp to do the lot?

Yeah, WeChat has the benefit that it works on any phone, and also it's already pretty much universally adopted by everyone in China.

From my understanding of how the apps you mentioned work, though, Apple Pay is superior in one respect - setting them up requires faffing around with QR codes at the point of sale, and is seemingly most efficient if the shop has generating QR codes set up as an automatic process. Apple Pay requires nothing extra of most retailers, as it's exactly the same as using a contactless card. It does require extra software to exceed the contactless limit (and the banks can impose a limit on transactions), but all major retailers have had that software installed for years.

I think that anybody who launches an app that does the same thing as Apple Pay (and Google Pay, and Samsung Pay - imaginative names from the copycats there), but which works on any phone will corner the market overnight.

When you pay with WeChat (or Alipay, but I have generally only been using WeChat), you can either scan the QR code of the merchant, or they can scan a QR code on your phone.

At my business I don't have a QR code for people to scan set up, but I just input the price into the machine the same way I would when people pay by credit card, then scan their phone. I find it no more difficult than tapping a credit card, and more convenient than swiping a credit card.

One question: can you use Apple Pay to buy things online? I buy plane tickets and pay for hotels with WeChat. I think I have to use Alipay to shop on taobao, which is the only reason I set it up recently.
One issue with WeChat though is that I can't use it to pay for things outside of china. Chinese nationals can, but when I tried while I was in Thailand recently it gave me a message saying that since I'm not a Chinese national I can't use WeChat to pay for things outside of the country. Which is pretty annoying. Good thing I brought cash (I had my bank cards too, but worry about fees).

 

[Roboramma]

But not on iPhones, and you can't transfer money from them to any of the others. My point is that when there's an app that does exactly the same thing but which works on any phone then that'll surpass each of the native ones.

I've seen adds for the "Cash App". Not sure how it works, but it may be what you're talking about?

There's an infrastructure and adoption problem though: until they have enough users, vendors might not be equipped to accept them, but if vendors aren't taking it, they won't get users...

 

[arthwollipot]

I've seen adds for the "Cash App". Not sure how it works, but it may be what you're talking about?

I believe that Squeegee was referring to a hypothetical platform-agnostic app that works on all devices.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

Yeah, you can do this with Apply Pay, too - but you can only give money to someone else who has Apple Pay. I can understand plenty of reasons why that might be the case, but it strikes me as something that they'll have to work out if they want to become truly ubiquitous or, at least, people's first choice.

Once an app that's available for all phone operating systems comes along, then Apple Pay will be obsolete. Why use Apple Pay to pay for goods and transfer money to friends who also have iPhones and use DifferentCashApp to transfer money to friends on Android, when you can just use DifferentCashApp to do the lot?

From my understanding of how the apps you mentioned work, though, Apple Pay is superior in one respect - setting them up requires faffing around with QR codes at the point of sale, and is seemingly most efficient if the shop has generating QR codes set up as an automatic process. Apple Pay requires nothing extra of most retailers, as it's exactly the same as using a contactless card. It does require extra software to exceed the contactless limit (and the banks can impose a limit on transactions), but all major retailers have had that software installed for years.

I think that anybody who launches an app that does the same thing as Apple Pay (and Google Pay, and Samsung Pay - imaginative names from the copycats there), but which works on any phone will corner the market overnight.

But not on iPhones, and you can't transfer money from them to any of the others. My point is that when there's an app that does exactly the same thing but which works on any phone then that'll surpass each of the native ones.

Say I've got an iPhone, my mother has an iPhone, and my brother has an Android. I want to give £10 to both my brother and my mother. I can just use Apple Pay to text that money to my mother, but I have to find some other way to give the money to my brother.

But say that DifferentCashApp launches and it's identical to Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay - except that you can install it on any phone. Now I can do everything that I can with Apple Pay and I can text £10 to my brother. So why wouldn't I do all my money transferring and POS purchases with DifferentCashApp rather than Apple Pay? Why would I use Apple Pay for some operations and then DifferentCashApp for those that I can't do with Apple Pay? Wouldn't it make more sense to just use the one app for everything?

That's what I mean - when a new app launches that does everything that the individual ones do, but which can be installed on any phone, then that'll be the end of the individual services.

I suspect that what may happen before then is that they'll get together and arrange protocols between them so that you can transfer money between any of the apps. Sort of like when cash machines first appeared you could only use a Lloyd's card in a Lloyd's machine, but banks soon realised that it was more advantageous to everybody to let any card be used in any machine.

Because surely the goal here if you're Apple, google, or Samsung is to have cash replaced with your respective apps? And that'll never truly happen if you can't transfer money from a google Pay account to an Apple Pay account. If granny can't give her grandson a tenner or if a dad can't send his daughter the taxi fare home because they've got different phones, then it'll never replace cash. And I'm sure that Apple, google, and Samsung understand this, and I'm also sure that they're realistic enough to know that they're never going to have 100% of the population using their products and nobody else's. And I'm sure that none of them want some third party app to drive them out of the market completely.

So I imagine that at some point they'll cooperate and make it possible for their apps to talk to each other. Whether or not it'll take a third party app coming along to give them the requisite kick up the arse remains to be seen.

First, Google Pay is a re-brand of Google Wallet for consistency for consumers. It predated Apple Pay by a number of years. PayPal predated both.

You can use Google Pay on an iPhone to send money to family and friends. You can use PayPal on both types of phones as well. And Venmo. There are lots of options.

The problem isn't the lack of an OS neutral choice. The problem is that Apple restricts their devices to only allow Apple Pay to use NFC for IRL purchases.

When it comes to mobile wallets, Apple is the $1 trillion elephant in the room.

The iPhone maker controls about half of the US smartphone market and around 10% worldwide. A recent survey showed that more than 80% of US teens have an iPhone. Every one of those devices comes pre-installed with Apple Pay, the company’s mobile wallet.

Consumers in the US and Europe still like to buy things with debit and credit cards, but Apple isn’t giving up. As iPhone sales stall, the Cupertino-based company is looking to squeeze more profit out of services like payments. Among those efforts is its credit card, which is designed to reward customers more for using the mobile wallet than the flashy titanium payment card.

Perhaps the giant smartphone maker’s biggest advantage is its grip on the iPhone’s near-field communication (NFC) technology. Used by many companies, NFC is the tech behind contactless payments, among many other things. It has caught on in the UK for payment cards, and seems likely to become popular in the US over time. Google, which controls the Android operating system for mobile phones, doesn’t restrict access to NFC.

But on the iPhone, Apple for the most part blocks other companies and developers from using its NFC application programming interface (API) for their own products, including mobile-wallet apps. (One possible exception is a transit service in Japan.) It doesn’t take much imagination to think that this has likely impeded innovation. If you see someone using an iPhone for payments, they’re likely using either Apple Pay or a mobile-wallet app that relies on optical QR codes. QR codes are the dominant way to pay for things digitally in China, where WeChat Pay and Alipay are dominant, and are also popular in the Nordics via services like Sweden’s Swish.

Apple’s decision to restrict access to NFC is clearly a strategic one, said Tim Derdenger, who teaches at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. The lack of access impedes startups as well as giants like Amazon, which operates Amazon Pay. “They don’t want rivals launching a wallet,” Derdenger said. “If they opened it up, it would mitigate their market position.”

Linky.

 

[Sherkeu]

Card payments are adapting.
In-n-Out Burger used to just take my card. Today, they had me put it into a reader and take it out myself. No contact! (they didn't require a PIN before but they used to take the card and run it themselves)

 

[Roboramma]

I believe that Squeegee was referring to a hypothetical platform-agnostic app that works on all devices.

Yeah, I know, I meant does this actual example have the characteristics of the hypothetical thing he's talking about?

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

I find it no more difficult than tapping a credit card, and more convenient than swiping a credit card.

My point isn't whether you find it convenient, but whether retailers have to invest in the technology/software/firmware/whatever in order to make it feasible. If a supermarket chain has to invest a few million to make it work, then they're likely to be less inclined to do that than to encourage the services that they already have the infrastructure to use.

One question: can you use Apple Pay to buy things online?

Yes, although only using your phone (or a mac talking to your phone), and I'm not sure exactly how many websites accept it yet.

Despite the way I've been talking in this thread, I don't actually use it myself yet. So far I'm attempting to avoid anything that allows me to make in-app purchases, because I know how easy it is to spend money because it's not actually a lot of money, and then have all of those not a lots actually add up to quite a bit. I'm not ruling it out in the future, but at the moment I'm happier using a card and not having Apple Pay set up at all.

 

[Roboramma]

My point isn't whether you find it convenient, but whether retailers have to invest in the technology/software/firmware/whatever in order to make it feasible. If a supermarket chain has to invest a few million to make it work, then they're likely to be less inclined to do that than to encourage the services that they already have the infrastructure to use.

Well, they certainly wouldn't have to invest in millions to make it work. Why would they? Maybe the banks would, but over here at least it all runs on the same system as the credit card machines.

Yes, although only using your phone (or a mac talking to your phone), and I'm not sure exactly how many websites accept it yet.

Thanks.

Despite the way I've been talking in this thread, I don't actually use it myself yet. So far I'm attempting to avoid anything that allows me to make in-app purchases, because I know how easy it is to spend money because it's not actually a lot of money, and then have all of those not a lots actually add up to quite a bit. I'm not ruling it out in the future, but at the moment I'm happier using a card and not having Apple Pay set up at all.

Yeah, I generally try to take a similar approach myself.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

The problem isn't the lack of an OS neutral choice. The problem is that Apple restricts their devices to only allow Apple Pay to use NFC for IRL purchases.

Okay, fair enough.

Either way, this is what I think the big stumbling block will be for apps overtaking cards as people's primary form of payment. I still think that the most likely solution will be that Apple will allow or find a way to facilitate direct money transfers between apps (or one app) from other developers. It seems likely that they'll come to the conclusion that it'll be more powerful and therefore more widely-used if you can use it to send money to, say, a Venmo account, and I'd have thought that Venmo would come to the same conclusion.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Card payments are adapting.
In-n-Out Burger used to just take my card. Today, they had me put it into a reader and take it out myself. No contact! (they didn't require a PIN before but they used to take the card and run it themselves)

It's been like that for years in the UK. Every checkout has a card reader set up for the customer to use and in smaller shops or if the purchase costs too much you insert your card and input your PIN. More common, though, and for smaller purchases (just gone up to a limit of £45 to encourage people to do this during the outbreak) you literally just touch your card to the reader and the payment is made automatically. The advantage at the moment is that you don't even have to touch a keypad.

This is what Apple Pay, etc. does, allow you to do the same thing with your phone or watch - just do a security check (Face ID on the phone, PIN on the watch), and place your device near the card reader and it'll make the payment.