Today I am one step closer to not only going cashless, but also going walletless.
This is going to be old news for those of you in the U.S., but yesterday, all 5 of Canada’s big banks signed on to Apple Pay. Before yesterday, you had to have an American Express credit card – which I do not have – to use Apple Pay in Canada. Now you can use a debit and/or credit card from these institutions.
What’s great about Apple Pay is that it can be used anywhere that contactless, or tap, payments are currently accepted. And since this is pretty commonplace in Canada – more so than in the U.S. I think – Apple Pay can, at least in theory, be used almost anywhere.
Being the early adopter and geek that I am, I went out for lunch today determined to test out Apple Pay. As I pulled out my phone to pay for lunch, the guy told me: “That’s not going to work. Other people have tried before.” But I tried anyway and, boom, it worked like magic. The transaction amount popped right up on my screen.
I am pretty excited about this for a couple of reasons.
I am a fan and long time user of Foursquare – now known as both Foursquare and Swarm.
Foursquare has struggled against competitors such as Yelp.com when it comes to local business recommendations. And I have less than 100 friends on my Swarm. It doesn’t seem to be that popular here in Toronto.
But I’ve always loved the data collection aspect of Foursquare / Swarm. Even though most people don’t seem to care about that. When I check-in somewhere, such as the gym, it’ll tell me how many weeks in a row I’ve been there, whether it’s a new personal record, who else is nearby, and a host of other things.
I’ve always felt like there was so much potential in all of the data it was collecting.
Well the company is starting to make better use of that data. Recently they used their foot traffic data at Apple stores (I am assuming this goes beyond just check-in data) to predict the number of iPhones that Apple was going to sell globally following the launch of the 6s and 6s Plus.
They predicted between 13 to 15 million handsets and it turns out
I had a friend ask me this week about how I decide what to write on this blog. His comment was that I tend to write about a variety of different topics. He wondered: Isn’t it better to focus on one particular niche?
The simple answer is that I write about what interests me. And secondary to that is any concern around what will get the most clicks. In fact, I try not to fall into the trap of worrying about the latter. Sometimes it can be paralyzing to fixate on what will appeal most to the tens of thousands of people who read this blog on a regular basis.
The reality is that my interests are much broader than, say, just design and real estate; though these two topics are clearly central.
I learned a long time ago while studying architecture and art history that what we make as a society is generally a product of the cultural milieu at the time. In other words, the built environment doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It is the physical manifestation of what we believe to be true at a particular moment.
Today, it’s pretty hard to ignore the importance of tech. Think of some of the most valuable companies in the world right now: Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and so on. Now, technology has always shaped our cities, but what makes this moment different is the decisive shift toward software.
It’s arguably no longer about who can build the best mousetrap. It’s about who can build the best software layer on top of that mousetrap.
In 2011, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen (previously the co-founder of Netscape) published a widely shared essay called, “Why Software Is Eating the World.” And over the past 6 years he has been proven to be very right.
The 3 main points he aimed to make with that essay are as follows:
Every product or service that can become software will become software.
Every company will have to become a software company.
The winning companies will be the best software companies.
Depending on your industry, this may sound ludicrous to you. Certainly in 2011 it probably seemed that way.
But a perfect example of this phenomenon is the iPhone. The phone itself is manufactured in China, albeit where a lot of great hardware innovation is taking place.
But at this point, phones have become fairly commoditized. The profits that Apple makes from the iPhone disproportionately come from the software layer and the app ecosystem it has developed.
You could make a similar argument with Tesla. Autonomous navigation – which most of us can agree will have a profound impact on cities – is largely a software challenge.
And so if you believe that autonomous vehicles will be a fundamental part of the future of mobility, then it’s not that hard to believe in point number three: the winning car company will also have to be the best car software company.
Some industries have been less touched by tech and software – real estate being one of them. But if Andreessen is right and it’s not a question of if, but a question of when, then it behooves all of us to think about the potential impacts.
I love how Andreessen ends this podcast discussion with Barry Ritholtz of Bloomberg and so I’m going to repeat it here to close out this post. He says: “There are no bad ideas. There are only early ideas.”
And that’s why I write about tech on my city building blog.
Firstly, it’s more secure. Apple Pay works in tandem with the iPhone fingerprint scanner. So even if I were to lose my phone, nobody would be able to charge anything to it. That’s not the case with a lost wallet. Anyone can tap a credit card to buy something.
Secondly, Apple is working on allowing reward cards to be stored in its Wallet app. I am terrible about remembering to collect rewards and use gift cards, so anything that consolidates and simplifies is a positive in my view.
Thirdly, I like to go to the gym and go cycling with just my phone and headphones. I don’t like carrying around my wallet. I’m always afraid that I might lose it or someone might steal it from a locker. So I try and leave it at home. Now I can do that and still pay for stuff – assuming my battery will last that long.
Of course, it’ll be awhile until we can all really go walletless. I’m not aware of any significant push to digitize government IDs. But it will happen. (Does that mean there will be no more fake IDs for underage drinking?)
As this transition happens, I can’t help but think of all the small businesses that only accept/use cash and probably hide some of their earnings. I suspect it’s going to be a lot harder to do that in the future.
I’m also thinking about how transit agencies are going to have to quickly get onboard with this technology. Here in Ontario, we’re still rolling out a card-based payment system. And cards are about to disappear; perhaps sooner than most people think.
This validates the accuracy of our prediction and while we’re proud of the result, we certainly aren’t surprised. Foursquare’s data is essentially the world’s biggest panel of foot traffic data — we have the best sense of the trends and patterns of the movement of people and their phones around the world.
This is powerful stuff. If there were a way for me to be bullish on Foursquare beyond just writing this post, I would be.
