Apple Pay遭遇零售商聯盟抵制大綱

One week after its debut, Apple’s new mobile wallet is showing promise with consumers.
亮相一週後，蘋果(Apple)的全新移動錢包在吸引消費者方面展現了美好前景。

Apple’s rivals in the payments industry, meanwhile, are scrambling to prevent it from being too successful.
與此同時，蘋果在支付業的競爭對手正在緊急行動起來，設法阻止它變得太成功。

Even before Apple Pay was announced, a coalition of retailers refused to accept it in their stores. More than 50 companies make up this group, the so-called Merchant Customer Exchange or MCX, including global retail giants like Walmart, Best Buy and Gap Inc.
在蘋果宣佈要推出Apple Pay之前，一個零售商聯盟已經拒絕在其門店中接受它了。這個名爲“商家客戶交易”（Merchant Customer Exchange，簡稱MCX）的組織有50多家公司成員，包括沃爾瑪(Walmart)、百思買(Best Buy)和Gap等全球零售業巨頭。

It’s not that these companies don’t want a mobile wallet to truly catch on with consumers. They see the mobile wallet as a way to help retailers understand more about their customers’ shopping habits and, potentially, let merchants avoid the high fees they pay when processing credit card transactions.
這些公司並非不想要一個能真正吸引消費者的移動錢包。在它們看來，移動錢包是一種幫助零售商更好地瞭解顧客購物習慣的辦法，並且有可能讓商戶規避信用卡交易中需要繳納的高額費用。

But they are working on building a competitor, CurrentC, a mobile wallet app that will connect directly to customers’ bank accounts or store-specific credit card. It won’t be available until 2015.
但是它們在開發一種和Apple Pay相抗衡的移動錢包應用CurrentC，這種應用會直接和顧客的銀行賬號或針對具體商戶的信用卡綁定。它至少要到2015年才能推出。

The problem is that under the terms of their MCX contractual agreement, they are not supposed to accept competing mobile payments products like Apple Pay, according to multiple retailers involved with MCX, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. If these retailers break their contracts, they will face steep fines for doing so, these people said.
問題是，據多家屬於MCX的零售商稱，根據MCX的合同規定，他們是不可以接受Apple Pay這種競爭對手的移動支付產品的，這些商家要求在本文中匿名。他們說，一旦違反合同規定，會遭到高額罰款。

Since Apple Pay was introduced a week ago, consumers have tried to use it in MCX members like Rite Aid and CVS. So those businesses have disabled the technology that supports Apple Pay.
Apple Pay是一週前推出的，自那以後有消費者試圖在Rite Aid和CVS等MCX會員商戶使用它。這些商戶因此已經禁用了支持Apple Pay的技術。

For weeks, Walmart and Best Buy have said they will not support Apple’s payments product. And Target, which has partnered with Apple for online payments, does not accept Apple Pay in its stores.
幾周來沃爾瑪和百思買一直在說，他們不會支持蘋果的支付產品。在在線支付上與蘋果有合作的塔吉特(Target)，在其門店是不接受Apple Pay的。

At stake is the future of how consumers choose to pay for things, with technology companies, credit card businesses and retailers all fighting for a piece of what may become a $90 billion mobile payments market, according to projections from Forrester.
此事關乎消費者支付方式的未來，據弗雷斯特(Forrester)的預計，移動支付將形成一個900億美元（約合5506億元人民幣）的市場，科技公司、信用卡商家和零售商都希望能分得一勺羹。But the clock is ticking. If Apple Pay becomes a hit, MCX member retailers still waiting on CurrentC to begin could miss out on untold mobile payment transactions. Merchants also risk customer resentment if they continue to refuse Apple Pay. And if Apple Pay catches on, consumers may not be interested in a competing product.
但是時間不等人。如果Apple Pay大獲成功，還在等CurrentC的MCX零售商成員錯過的移動支付交易是難以估量的。如果商戶繼續拒絕Apple Pay，還有可能招致顧客的怨恨。而一旦Apple Pay普及起來，消費者可能就不會想去嘗試與之競爭的產品了。

“These retailers are in a real jam,” said Karen Webster, chief executive of Market Platform Dynamics, a payments industry consulting firm. “The last thing merchants want is ticking off their consumers over payment,” Ms. Webster said.
“這些零售商有大麻煩了，”支付業諮詢公司市場平臺動態(Market Platform Dynamics)首席執行官凱倫·韋伯斯特(Karen Webster)說。“因爲付款方式的問題惹怒顧客是商家最不願意看到的事。”

First announced in 2012, CurrentC is an effort by merchants to build their ideal mobile wallet. CurrentC is designed to link directly to a customer’s bank account instead of a credit card. This is a strategic move, analysts say; in bypassing the credit card companies, merchants can avoid the high fees that they are required to pay on each credit transaction they process.
將推出CurrentC的消息是2012年宣佈的，此舉的意圖是打造一種商家的理想移動錢包。按照CurrentC的設計，應用是和顧客的銀行賬戶直接聯接的，而不是信用卡。分析人士說，這是一個戰略舉措；繞過信用卡公司後，商戶可以避開每次進行信用交易時產生的高額費用。

“Retailers are looking for a combination of factors to adopt in stores,” said Mallory Duncan, senior vice president of the National Retail Federation, a retail advocacy group. “And that includes if it delivers a good price to hold down costs for them and their customers.”
“零售商在尋找一種門店需考慮的各項因素的組合，”零售倡導組織美國零售聯合會(National Retail Federation)高級副總裁莫羅伊·鄧肯(Mallory Duncan)說。“這其中包括它是否能給一個好價錢，幫商戶和顧客降低成本。”

CurrentC would also give retailers the ability to track shopping habits across the dozens of stores that belong to MCX, a data set that has traditionally been held by credit card companies, not merchants. If retailers had access to this data, it could be used to deliver relevant deals and loyalty points to consumers, which could increase these companies’ bottom lines.
CurrentC還讓商家可以對顧客在MCX旗下所有商戶的購物習慣進行跟蹤，這組數據通常是由信用卡公司而非商家掌握的。如果零售商能拿到這個數據，就可以用它來推出定位準確的促銷活動和積分，從而有望增加公司的收入。

That could also amount to in-store experiences centered on the smartphone, an area in which Walmart, one of the biggest partners in MCX, has increasingly dabbled in recent years.
同時它還可能營造一種以智能手機爲中心的購物體驗，作爲MCX最大的合作伙伴之一，沃爾瑪近年來一直在試水這個領域。

“MCX is studying how to make sure all of the things that a customer wants to do in a store can be facilitated in a conscious way,” said Steve Mott, owner of BetterBuyDesign, a payments industry consulting firm.
“MCX正在研究如何有意識地讓顧客在一個商店裏做的所有事都便利起來，”支付業諮詢公司BetterBuyDesign所有人史蒂夫·莫特(Steve Mott)說。

Unlike Apple Pay, CurrentC is months away from beginning. When it is finally introduced, there is no guarantee it will take off.
和Apple Pay不同的是，CurrentC還要再過數月才能啓用。即使等到最終推出，也不能保證會普及起來。

Critics of CurrentC say it appears much more difficult to use than Apple Pay. Instead of contactless payment technology, CurrentC will rely on QR codes, a type of bar code that merchants scan to complete the transaction. It will also be an app that users must find and download from Apple’s App store.
對CurrentC持批評態度的人說，它看起來比Apple Pay難用很多。CurrentC沒有使用無需接觸的支付技術，而是依靠QR碼，商家通過掃描這種條形碼來完成交易。同時它也是一個應用，用戶必須到蘋果的應用商店上找到並下載它。

Apple Pay, on the other hand, relies on so-called near-field communication technology built into every iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 plus. In contrast to using CurrentC, customers are not required to open an app or even unlock their iPhones when using Apple Pay.
而Apple Pay則依靠所有iPhone 6和iPhone 6 Plus內置的所謂近場通訊技術。和CurrentC不同的是，顧客在使用Apple Pay時不必打開一個應用，甚至不用把他們的iPhone解鎖。

Mobile payments are still very young in commerce and shopping. In 2013, mobile proximity payments in the United States amounted to $1.6 billion, according to eMarketer, an industry research firm. That is but a fraction of the $4.26 trillion spent in brick-and-mortar stores that year.
移動支付在商貿和購物領域仍然是個新鮮事物。產業研究公司eMarketer的數據顯示，2013年美國的近距離移動支付總額爲16億美元。相比當年實體商鋪內支付總額的4.26萬億美元只是個零頭。

And while many industry experts expect mobile payments to rise over the next five years, there is no guarantee that consumers will find mobile wallets any more convenient than paying with cash or a credit card. Google’s payments product, Google Wallet, famously flopped after its introduction in 2011. PayPal’s mobile wallet options have failed to truly catch on as well.
雖然很多業界專家預計移動支付在未來五年裏會有增長，但消費者是否會認爲移動錢包比現金或信用卡更便利，卻很難說。谷歌(Google)在2011年推出的支付產品Google Wallet是個著名的失敗案例。貝寶(PayPal)的移動錢包方案也沒能真正普及起來。

Still, many say they believe that if any company is able to widely influence consumer behavior, it’s Apple. And if that is the case, MCX may have picked the wrong mobile wallet to back.
不過，很多人還是認爲，如果說有什麼公司能對消費行爲產生深遠影響的話，那就是蘋果了。如果真是如此，MCX可能支持了一個錯誤的移動錢包。

“When these contracts were signed several years ago, no one knew about Apple Pay, or what mobile wallets were going to look like,” Ms. Webster said. “It just didn’t have the same sort of consumer froth around it.”
“幾年前籤這些合同的時候，大家都不知道有Apple Pay，也不知道移動錢包應該是個什麼樣子，”韋伯斯特說。“CurrentC可是沒有這種讓消費者熱議的魅力。”