苹果的Apple Pay会引发数字支付革命吗

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

戴维·多诺修(David Donohue)和他的钱包及里面东西的关系一直不融洽。

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.

他去年两次丢钱包。三次成为信用卡盗窃案受害人。其中有一次，小偷直接从他的邮箱里顺走了一张替换新卡。

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.

多诺修说，这就是为什么他热切盼望着用上Apple Pay，科技巨头苹果(Apple)周一发布的电子商务新产品。他只需在他的iPhone上按一个按钮，就可以通过这项新服务在数千家零售店铺中买东西，包括梅西百货(Macy's)和沃尔格林(Walgreens)的门店。不需要钱包、现金或塑料卡片。

“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.”

“要是能摆脱钱包就太棒了，原因很简单，我不喜欢带钱包，”42岁的多诺修说，这个旧金山社交媒体营销创业公司员工在接受采访时说。“我的梦幻设定是只带手机和现金出门。”

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.

多年来，谷歌(Google)、威瑞森(Verizon)和AT&T等大型科技、电信公司一直在设法用智能手机应用替代钱包，在收银台这里点一下，那里刷一下，取代信用卡或钞票。但是商业专家认为，帮助推动了移动革命的苹果，有望助推主流消费者转向数码支付——这是在商品和服务的购买方式演化过程中出现的最新动向。

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.

几代美国人都曾把现金作为主要支付手段。他们后来改用支票，再后来是信用卡和借记卡。信用卡出现后，只用了几十年的时间就变得十分普及：根据美联储的数据，截至2012年，美国境内流通的各种支付卡数量已达到7.76亿张。

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.

我们可以把Apple Pay看成没有卡片的信用卡。在最新款iPhone里输入信用卡信息之后，消费者就可以在零售商的有效支付终端前晃动手机来付款了，比如在全食超市(Whole Foods)和麦当劳餐厅(McDonald’s)。顾客可以通过iPhone的指纹扫描器来确认这笔交易。

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.

目前通过刷智能手机来购物的人相对较少。根据市场研究公司eMarketer的估计，去年在美国，消费者通过与Apple Pay类似的无接触手机支付方式共支付了16亿美元。这只是去年2643亿美元的电子商务零售总额中很少的一部分，与传统实体店4.26万亿美元的零售总额相比，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.

“手机钱包目前的处境有点像1995年的电子商务，”支付处理公司Stripe的联合创始人约翰·科利森(John Collison)说。“亚马逊是让人们感到可以放心用信用卡进行网上支付的大公司之一。”他说，苹果将为手机钱包带来同样的改变。

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.

不过，另外的一些人则提到了谷歌、威瑞森、Square等公司之前的手机钱包业务，这些公司的手机钱包都没有被广泛接受。此外，苹果面临的最大困难，是说服数千家零售商在款台接受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，它对普通商家真的没有很大价值，”弗雷斯特研究公司(Forrester Research)的电商分析师德内·卡林顿(Denée Carrington)说。“尤其是考虑到，商家们都想要从每笔交易中获得消费者的更多信息。”她指出，Apple Pay不会涉及商家往往非常重视的营销策略，比如顾客积分和返利项目。

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

不过，行业专家称，苹果的产品有着之前产品所不具备的一些优势。

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及其他移动支付技术通常取决于收银支付终端使用的技术，比如在车站收银处，消费者可以刷卡。但到明年秋天，美国商家面临更新信用卡支付终端，采用EMA规范的最后期限，这种技术使消费者的信用卡交易变得更加安全，EMA代表Europay、万事达(MasterCard)和Visa。很多人认为，这些新终端也将接受iPhone 6等近场通讯设备的付款。

“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.”

“苹果推出支付系统的时机把握非常明智，” 初创公司ShopKeep的董事长诺姆·梅里特(Norm Merritt)说。“人们需要购买新的符合EMV规范的设备。近场通讯功能只要额外的几美元。”该公司向小型公司出售销售点终端。

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

苹果还在宣传Apple Pay的安全举措，称该系统比消费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.”

“我们完全要依靠露在外面的卡号，以及过时、容易破解的磁条，”苹果公司首席执行官蒂莫西·D·库克(Timothy D. Cook)上个月在加利福尼亚州库比提诺表示。“我们知道这些都不安全。”

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.

苹果正在与Visa、美国运通公司(American Express)和万事达等主要信用卡公司合作，将所谓的标记化系统整合进Apple Pay。这项技术将安全的代码而不是信用卡号发送给商家，专家称这将降低信用卡数据被盗的可能性。每一笔交易都会有一个独一无二的加密代码，该代码可以帮助判断交易是否合法。

“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.

万事达负责新兴支付业务的高级副总裁詹姆斯·安德森(James Anderson)说，“他们的品牌、技术，以及对安全手段的选择吸引了我们。”安德森还表示，iPhone 6的指纹识别系统也是一种防止信用卡诈骗的新方法，让人印象深刻。

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.

不过，消费者只有拥有iPhone 6或者6 Plus，才能在实体商店使用Apple Pay。美国智能手机用户中有超过一半的人使用Android设备，Apple Pay不适用于该系统。