In an effort to get more people to use Apple Pay when shopping online, the company rolled out a new webpage that highlights exclusive holiday deals for customers who use the Apple Pay on the Web feature, which it just launched.
According to a report, the Apple Pay on the Web holiday website includes deals from Adidas, Casper, GrubHub, lululemon, Overstock, Shopify and a host of others. Some of the deals include free shipping, gift cards and other perks. For example, according to the report, Casper is giving customers who use Apple Pay to buy a new mattress a free $50 iTunes gift card.
Up until September, Apple’s main theater of operation for Apple Pay was initially focused on mobile in-store transactions powered by Touch ID, tokenization and NFC. That’s when it rolled out Apple Pay on the Web, which only works in the Safari browser. With it, users can pay online via a “Pay with Apple Pay” button. Apple Pay on the Web also remains Apple device-dependent; bioauthentication must be done using Touch ID on a phone or watch.
How much will it affect PayPal, which has long been named as a competitor to Apple Pay? Hard to say. Apple remains committed to keeping its payment platform walled within its own garden, meaning users have to be very into Apple products to use Apple Pay on the Web. PayPal is currently the most popular alternative online payment method today given its wide and growing merchant acceptance, and while some are claiming Apple Pay will be a faster checkout than PayPal on sites where they both appear, it is unclear if a slightly faster Apple Pay will induce current PayPal users to re-orient all their online payments around Mac computers, an iPhone/Apple Watch and Apple’s Safari web browser. (Unlikely.) As for customers not yet captured, it is possible that Apple will convince more of the unconvinced that its button is better, but it will come down, again, to where customers can use it.
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