First-time success rate of my Apple Pay transactions today: 0%
9 September 2015
Yes, you did read this right – today I could not complete a single Apple Pay transaction successfully first time. This was my experience today:
- I tried using Apple Pay five times – four times to get in and out of the London transport network and once at a coffee shop to buy an espresso.
- Not once did I manage to complete the transaction right away.
- Only once I could complete the transaction via the fingerprint. And before you accuse me of sweaty fingers, on all occasions I made extra efforts to wipe clean my phone's TouchID reader and my fingers before approaching the terminal. And while I did have some issues with TouchID in the past, now the fingerprint unlocks the phone just fine most of the time.
- Three other times, I had to type in my password, which then completed the transaction.
- I could not get my coffee on Apple Pay at all – no matter what I did, the transaction would not go through. My default card is Amex, so I asked the merchant if they accepted Amex cards in the first place (I couldn’t see any obvious signs that they did). He confirmed that they accepted Amex, but not if the card was contactless! Which I guess explains my lack of success in that instance, but there was no way of me knowing it in advance – the shop clearly had contactless terminals, so I assumed my Amex inside Apple Pay would work just fine. In the end, I embarrassingly put my phone away and paid cash.