蘋果的Apple Pay會引發數字支付革命嗎

David Donohue has a tough relationship with his wallet and the items inside it.

戴維·多諾修(David Donohue)和他的錢包及裏面東西的關係一直不融洽。

He has lost his wallet twice in the past year. He has fallen victim to credit card theft three times. On one occasion, a thief plucked a credit card replacement sent to his home directly from his mailbox.

他去年兩次丟錢包。三次成爲信用卡盜竊案受害人。其中有一次，小偷直接從他的郵箱裏順走了一張替換新卡。

Mr. Donohue said that is why he was excited to use Apple Pay, the tech giant’s new e-commerce product released on Monday. By pushing a button on his iPhone, he can make a purchase at one of the thousands of retail locations, including Macy’s or Walgreens stores, using the new service. No wallet, cash or plastic card necessary.

多諾修說，這就是爲什麼他熱切盼望着用上Apple Pay，科技巨頭蘋果(Apple)週一發佈的電子商務新產品。他只需在他的iPhone上按一個按鈕，就可以通過這項新服務在數千家零售店鋪中買東西，包括梅西百貨(Macy's)和沃爾格林(Walgreens)的門店。不需要錢包、現金或塑料卡片。

“I’d be beyond thrilled to be walletless, simply because I don’t enjoy carrying one,” Mr. Donohue, 42, who works at a social media marketing start-up in San Francisco, said in an interview. “My dream scenario is to carry only my phone and cash.”

“要是能擺脫錢包就太棒了，原因很簡單，我不喜歡帶錢包，”42歲的多諾修說，這個舊金山社交媒體營銷創業公司員工在接受採訪時說。“我的夢幻設定是隻帶手機和現金出門。”

Large tech and telecom companies like Google, Verizon and AT&T have tried for years to replace the traditional wallet with smartphone apps, having a click here or swipe there replace a credit card or dollar bills at the register. But commerce experts say they believe that the involvement of Apple, which helped revolutionize the mobile industry, could be the impetus that moves mainstream consumers to digital payments — the latest in an evolution of the way people buy goods and services.

多年來，谷歌(Google)、威瑞森(Verizon)和AT&T等大型科技、電信公司一直在設法用智能手機應用替代錢包，在收銀臺這裏點一下，那裏刷一下，取代信用卡或鈔票。但是商業專家認爲，幫助推動了移動革命的蘋果，有望助推主流消費者轉向數碼支付——這是在商品和服務的購買方式演化過程中出現的最新動向。

Generation after generation of Americans used cash as their primary payment. They then turned to bank checks, later to credit and debit cards. Within a few decades of their introduction, credit cards became ubiquitous: By 2012, nearly three quarters of a billion credit cards were being used in the United States, according to the Federal Reserve.

幾代美國人都曾把現金作爲主要支付手段。他們後來改用支票，再後來是信用卡和借記卡。信用卡出現後，只用了幾十年的時間就變得十分普及：根據美聯儲的數據，截至2012年，美國境內流通的各種支付卡數量已達到7.76億張。

Think of Apple Pay as taking the card out of credit card. After entering their credit card information into the latest iPhones, customers can wave their phone in front of a properly equipped payment terminal at retailers like Whole Foods and McDonald’s. Customers verify the transaction with the iPhone’s fingerprint scanning hardware.

我們可以把Apple Pay看成沒有卡片的信用卡。在最新款iPhone裏輸入信用卡信息之後，消費者就可以在零售商的有效支付終端前晃動手機來付款了，比如在全食超市(Whole Foods)和麥當勞餐廳(McDonald’s)。顧客可以通過iPhone的指紋掃描器來確認這筆交易。

Today, relatively few people buy things with a wave of a smartphone. In the United States last year, consumers spent $1.6 billion using contactless mobile payments of the sort allowed by Apple Pay, according to estimates from eMarketer, a market research firm. That is just a tiny fraction of $264.3 billion in e-commerce purchases made last year, and an even smaller portion of $4.26 trillion in traditional in-store retail purchases.

目前通過刷智能手機來購物的人相對較少。根據市場研究公司eMarketer的估計，去年在美國，消費者通過與Apple Pay類似的無接觸手機支付方式共支付了16億美元。這只是去年2643億美元的電子商務零售總額中很少的一部分，與傳統實體店4.26萬億美元的零售總額相比，就更加微不足道。

“Right now, mobile wallets are sort of like e-commerce in 1995,” said John Collison, co-founder of Stripe, a payments processing firm. “Amazon was one of the big companies that made people feel O.K. to put their credit cards online.” Apple, he said, will do the same for the mobile wallet.

“手機錢包目前的處境有點像1995年的電子商務，”支付處理公司Stripe的聯合創始人約翰·科利森(John Collison)說。“亞馬遜是讓人們感到可以放心用信用卡進行網上支付的大公司之一。”他說，蘋果將爲手機錢包帶來同樣的改變。

But others point to previous mobile wallet efforts from Google, Verizon and Square, among others, all of which failed to gain wide adoption. And Apple’s largest difficulty could be to persuade thousands of retailers to accept Apple Pay at the checkout line.

不過，另外的一些人則提到了谷歌、威瑞森、Square等公司之前的手機錢包業務，這些公司的手機錢包都沒有被廣泛接受。此外，蘋果面臨的最大困難，是說服數千家零售商在款臺接受Apple Pay支付。

“Apart from the cool factor, there’s really not a lot of value for the average merchant at the moment,” said Denée Carrington, an e-commerce analyst for Forrester Research. “Especially when you think about how merchants want to capture more information from consumers with each transaction.” She pointed out that Apple Pay did not connect to loyalty and awards programs that merchants often find valuable.

“除了很酷之外，就目前而言，它對普通商家真的沒有很大價值，”弗雷斯特研究公司(Forrester Research)的電商分析師德內·卡林頓(Denée Carrington)說。“尤其是考慮到，商家們都想要從每筆交易中獲得消費者的更多信息。”她指出，Apple Pay不會涉及商家往往非常重視的營銷策略，比如顧客積分和返利項目。

Industry experts, however, say that Apple’s offering has advantages that its predecessors did not.

不過，行業專家稱，蘋果的產品有着之前產品所不具備的一些優勢。

Accepting Apple Pay and some other mobile payment technologies usually relies on technology inside the payment terminals at registers, like at the stations where a consumer swipes a credit card. By next fall, though, American merchants face a deadline to upgrade their credit card terminals to accept E.M.V. — which stands for Europay, MasterCard and Visa — a technology that makes credit transactions more secure for consumers. Many believe those new terminals will also accept payments from Near Field Communication-enabled devices like the iPhone 6.

是否接受Apple Pay及其他移動支付技術通常取決於收銀支付終端使用的技術，比如在車站收銀處，消費者可以刷卡。但到明年秋天，美國商家面臨更新信用卡支付終端，採用EMA規範的最後期限，這種技術使消費者的信用卡交易變得更加安全，EMA代表Europay、萬事達(MasterCard)和Visa。很多人認爲，這些新終端也將接受iPhone 6等近場通訊設備的付款。

“Apple’s timing here is an astute stroke of brilliance,” said Norm Merritt, president of ShopKeep, a start-up that sells point-of-sale products for small businesses. “People will already have to invest in new E.M.V.-enabled machines. N.F.C. is just a few bucks more.”

“蘋果推出支付系統的時機把握非常明智，” 初創公司ShopKeep的董事長諾姆·梅里特(Norm Merritt)說。“人們需要購買新的符合EMV規範的設備。近場通訊功能只要額外的幾美元。”該公司向小型公司出售銷售點終端。

Apple is also promoting Apple Pay’s security measures, calling it far safer than the credit cards consumers use on a daily basis.

蘋果還在宣傳Apple Pay的安全舉措，稱該系統比消費者每天使用的信用卡安全得多。

“We’re totally reliant on the exposed numbers and the outdated and vulnerable mag stripe,” Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said in Cupertino, Calif., last month. “Which all of us know aren’t so secure.”

“我們完全要依靠露在外面的卡號，以及過時、容易破解的磁條，”蘋果公司首席執行官蒂莫西·D·庫克(Timothy D. Cook)上個月在加利福尼亞州庫比提諾表示。“我們知道這些都不安全。”

Apple is working with major credit card companies like Visa, American Express and MasterCard to integrate a so-called tokenization system into Apple Pay. The technology sends a secure code to merchants instead of a credit card number, which experts say will make credit card data theft less likely. Every transaction will also come with a unique encoded passcode that will help determine whether a transaction is legitimate.

蘋果正在與Visa、美國運通公司(American Express)和萬事達等主要信用卡公司合作，將所謂的標記化系統整合進Apple Pay。這項技術將安全的代碼而不是信用卡號發送給商家，專家稱這將降低信用卡數據被盜的可能性。每一筆交易都會有一個獨一無二的加密代碼，該代碼可以幫助判斷交易是否合法。

“Their brand, their technology and their choices in security made it compelling to us,” said James Anderson, senior vice president of emerging payments at MasterCard, who also pointed to Apple’s fingerprint identification system in the iPhone 6 as an impressive additional way to fight credit card fraud.

萬事達負責新興支付業務的高級副總裁詹姆斯·安德森(James Anderson)說，“他們的品牌、技術，以及對安全手段的選擇吸引了我們。”安德森還表示，iPhone 6的指紋識別系統也是一種防止信用卡詐騙的新方法，讓人印象深刻。

Still, consumers can use Apple Pay at a physical retailer only if they have the iPhone 6 or 6 Plus. More than half of American smartphone owners use an Android device, which does not work with Apple Pay.

不過，消費者只有擁有iPhone 6或者6 Plus，才能在實體商店使用Apple Pay。美國智能手機用戶中有超過一半的人使用Android設備，Apple Pay不適用於該系統。