Paying with my Apple Watch

Paying with my Apple Watch

My first 10 days of using Apple Pay on my Apple Watch at Visa payWave readers in Singapore:

• I used it at many merchants in Singapore and it works without any issues, even on Visa payWave acceptance infrastructure deployed more than 5 years ago!
• Unlike on an iPhone where a Visa payWave “card” is detected automatically, on the Apple Watch, a double click of the button below digital crown is required to bring up the “card”. This is one extra step compared with iPhone to do a transaction.
• It is not a very natural hand movement on my part when I pay with Apple Watch. As I wear the Apple Watch on my left hand – I have to turn my hand to an unnatural position to tap and pay using my watch. Compared with that, paying with iPhone was a much more natural way of tapping and paying
• When using Apple Watch to pay there is another major challenge. The contactless reader and its display is mostly hidden as the hand is blocking it. At this moment the 4 colored lights of Visa payWave came in very very handy to show the status of the transaction. Never have I been more proud about our ‘traffic light design’ on the Visa payWave readers deployed in Asia Pacific!
• Haptic feedback on Apple Watch on a successful transaction is only useful, but may go undetected at a noisy merchant outlet where lots are happening
• As expected, when holding on to the iPhone while trying to pay with the Apple Watch, there is collision as the reader detects the iPhone and Apple Watch as two “cards”
• Although my Apple Watch was paired with my iPhone, I had to provision the card (of course, from the US) once again on the Apple Watch before using it for payments
• Overall I would still rate my iPhone payment experience on Visa payWave readers a few notches above my Apple Watch payment experience