Originally announced by Apple CEO Tim Cook during a conference call with analysts, ExxonMobil has now launched an updated version of its Speedpass+ app that supports Apple Pay for purchases. The new app, which is accepted at some 6,000 stations today and will expand to cover all 10,000 US locations by the end of the year, bypasses the need to manually add a credit card to the account, and instead used a supported card previously added to Wallet, and authorize purchases with a fingerprint scan.
The app will determine the location of the station using GPS, then provide a QR code at the pump the user scans to pay. If a QR code isn’t available, the user will simply need to enter the pump number. Car washes can also be purchased directly using Apple Pay within the app. Exxon’s system is still not quite as seamless as the usual Apple Pay scenario, but that will require that pumps and stores at stations gain NFC-compatible contactless payment terminals — something that has been slow to roll out in the US, but is widely available in most other developed countries.
Some Exxon stations already use an NFC-compatible “speedpass stick” keyfob dongle that works more like what consumers expect from an Apple Pay experience, and possibly some of those stations are already unofficially compatible with Apple Pay, but there is currently no official compatibility with the mobile-payment technology. While Apple has been hugely successful with getting banks and other card issuers to support Apple Pay, one of the main problems with getting wider support for Apple Pay and NFC-based payment solutions in the US has been slow merchant response to upgrading store payment systems to accept them.
This is beginning to change, along with the issuance by US banks of mandated, more-secure EMV-style bank cards that use a “chip-and-PIN” type system. The most popular terminals that are compatible with EMVs also generally support “contactless” cards, and thus NFC-based payment systems. Because the entire processing and approval “back end” of such systems works directly with payment processors, merchants need do almost nothing apart from activating the NFC compatibility in the terminals in order to support systems like Android Pay.
In countries outside the US, where EMV terminals are the norm and have been for almost a decade, most stores support Apple Pay (using a supported US, UK, or Chinese payment card) whether they are aware of it or not. Currently, Apple says it has around two million compatible points of sale.
