Five months after shaking hands with Apple, retailer Kohl’s is starting to compete with the tech giant’s mobile-payment service Apple Pay.
For Apple, the market leader of in-store mobile payments, moves like Kohl’s are becoming increasingly familiar. Over the summer, Wal-Mart Stores rolled out its own mobile-payment service nationwide and pharmacy chain CVS Health introduced CVS Pay.
Apple Pay, which turns 2 years old this month, is facing stiffer competition and needs to find ways to stand out in a crowded field. In the next year, most retailers and fast-food restaurants will start their own mobile-payment services, and some of them will also offer Apple Pay. Apple, which expanded into Russia earlier this month, is looking to absorb more functions of people’s traditional wallets, such as transit cards and retail loyalty cards.
“You want to get into as many use cases as possible,” said Greg Weed, director of card performance research at Phoenix Marketing International. “The wallet app is ideally suited to self-service types of terminals: gas pumps, vending machines, transit. All of this stuff builds transactions. All of these things build up utility.”