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"Big" Apple announcement may involve Disney
- Thread starter PeterAlt
- Start date
dreamfinder
Well-Known Member
Judging by the number of people who seem to be talking on their phone instead of looking at menus while waiting in line at Starbucks and restaurants, I'd say that plenty of people already have their phone in hand instead of needing to pull out a wallet and dig for the right card, or fish through a purse for the right card. Yeah we are talking seconds here, but if a store can now serve a few more customers each hour without having to add staff/registers it does add up.
ABQ
Well-Known Member
My personal paranoia today prevents me from utilizing NFC for payments. I also use the app at Starbucks, but my Starbucks card rarely has more than 30 dollars on it, so if my phone were lost and someone wanted to nefariously purchase from Starbucks, oh well, 30 bucks of iced skinny 2 pump blah blahs are all they'd get. For some reason, I'm just not ready to hand my credit card data to my phone for tap to pay privileges. I know, it's stupid, as I've been paying for junk online ever since Bobby Orr ran ads for BayBank Homelink, but still.
FerretAfros
Well-Known Member
From my understanding, a large part of the reason that Disney wants to encourage payments with Magic Bands (and the Key to the World cards before that) is so they can cut down on the credit card fees they pay. Retailers pay a small fee (typically a few cents) for each purchase that has to be processed; with the hundreds of thousands of transactions made daily at WDW, those fees really start to add up.
By charging to it to your room, you let Disney hold off until the end of your trip and bundle all of them together into a single (large) transaction. Now instead of Disney having to pay your fee each time Jimmy gets a lollypop or Suzie gets a churro, they only pay once for your entire vacation; doing this for the dozens of transactions for each of the millions of families passing through WDW annually easily adds up and puts the whole MM+ system in a different light
Switching to an outside provider of a tap-to-pay system would presumably be no different than switching everybody back to credit cards, where Disney would need to pay for each transaction. Disney has hardware in place (which may or may not even be compatible with outside systems) but they hardly have the incentive to adopt this technology
By charging to it to your room, you let Disney hold off until the end of your trip and bundle all of them together into a single (large) transaction. Now instead of Disney having to pay your fee each time Jimmy gets a lollypop or Suzie gets a churro, they only pay once for your entire vacation; doing this for the dozens of transactions for each of the millions of families passing through WDW annually easily adds up and puts the whole MM+ system in a different light
Switching to an outside provider of a tap-to-pay system would presumably be no different than switching everybody back to credit cards, where Disney would need to pay for each transaction. Disney has hardware in place (which may or may not even be compatible with outside systems) but they hardly have the incentive to adopt this technology
xdan0920
Think for yourselfer
My favorite is synergy.
s8film40
Well-Known Member
NFC can work as RFID, if designed right and if they partnered on this ahead of time I see no reason why the My Disney Experience app can't completely replace Magic Bands.
http://blog.atlasrfidstore.com/rfid-vs-nfc
dreamfinder
Well-Known Member
Just to play the devils advocate, are you more likely to notice that your phone is missing, or that one of 3.7 credit cards an average consumer has (http://www.bostonfed.org/economic/ppdp/2011/ppdp1101.pdf)?
PrincessNelly_NJ
Well-Known Member
Yup, I use my Moto X to pay at 711, CVS, and about 4 other stores. People always give me the "that's so cool, I never knew phones could do that." I also use my google wallet card and get the same reaction about having a google card.
That is sadly true. The fact that google hardly ever mentions Google Wallet, and that people/businesses tend to follow whatever Apple does, will make tap to pay more popular.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
There can be security advantages. That is why US cards are finally doing away with swiping.
What about the implementation of MyMagic+ suggests such long range thinking? And why not have it available from the start?
Because Disney see the value in retail MagicBands and they want to control the entire experience. I don't see them making it easy to suddenly not require MagicBands.
ABQ
Well-Known Member
Good point, as I only own a below average 2 cards. I might notice it. I guess I need to start carrying the George Costanza wallet, as I would notice that missing, but would never notice 1 card M.I.A.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
Because the existing systems have proven so resilient?
s8film40
Well-Known Member
I have always viewed Magic Bands as a stop gap measure, and I see that continuing for a good while. Not everyone will have the equipment necessary to replace their Magic Band and so they will still need to have them available for quite a while. Magic Bands are a manufactured product though and have a very real cost for Disney. While they can upsell the special ones, I'm sure replacing very cheap plastic cards with Magic Bands has albeit not by much affected their revenue. I'm sure someone has thought about how much extra money they can make if X number of guests are able to use their own phone in place of a Magic Band and still get the same experience.
s8film40
Well-Known Member
The system is the long range thinking the technology is not. Technology changes and I think they wanted to build a system that could keep up with technology. When people being to use their own devices for Magic Band like interactions a tall kinds of everyday businesses it would seem silly to go to WDW and have use some outdated plastic band.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
The whole point of the MagicBand is that is functions as a differentiator. Using the same thing as everybody else completely kills that difference.
Next Big Thing
Well-Known Member
They could never completely replace magicbands for everyone. Not everyone has a smart phone.
