First-time success rate of my Apple Pay transactions today: 0%

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.

OK, I admit, the sample size is not big – only five transactions and I haven’t tried a diverse POS environment (TfL and a coffee shop), so maybe I’ve just been unlucky. But it’s not the first time this is happening to me. I already highlighted my trepidation of going up with Apple Pay to the tube gates in an earlier blog. And I had other bad experiences: after trying to pay with Apple Pay and failing at a local Co-op shop, I was told that I couldn’t just use a plastic contactless card or pay by cash – I had to insert my actual Amex card into the reader and type in the PIN code to complete the transaction. Really?? Looks like I am not alone struggling with Apple Pay in the UK, as this Twitter conversation demonstrates: https://twitter.com/gendal/status/633992876779827200 I also have a Visa debit card registered with Apple Pay, so I will try it out as well, but based on Richard’s comment, it doesn’t look like it’s a card type-specific issue at the moment… I love the idea of Apple Pay and easy payments by mobile phone. And I know that people like Jeremy and Richard are just as passionate about payments as I am, so we will continue to persevere and keep trying. But what will a “normal” consumer do if they have a bad experience? Will they be excited enough to come back and try again or will they just give up on mobile payments before they had a chance to succeed? I hope they don't, but these early Apple Pay glitches clearly show how difficult it is to create a truly great customer experience in payments, especially at the POS.