Apple Pay Makes NBA Debut Tonight in Orlando

Starting tonight, Orlando Magic fans have a new way to pay for those ten dollar cold ones.

The Magic is the first team in the National Basketball Association to offer Apple Pay to its customers. To start, it will only be available at 60 concession and retail locations throughout the Amway Center. However, the team will be expanding locations during the season and aim to reach 200 for the start of the 2015-16 season.

This, however, will not be Apple Pay’s debut in professional sports. MLB Advanced Media paid an undisclosed figure to install more than 300 terminals at Kauffman Stadium and AT&T Park in October for the World Series, marking the first use of the service at any sports facility. Meanwhile, down on the farm, the minor league Akron RubberDucks announced in October that it will accept Apple Pay at Canal Park for the 2015 season.

Here’s how it works. Using a near-field communication (NFC) chip, the iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus will send a payment to a store or restaurant’s reader when the user holds or waves the phone while keeping a finger on the Touch ID home button, which uses fingerprint recognition security. The payment will be processed using credit card information entered in the Passbook app that will assign a device an account number, which is encrypted and securely stored. Each transaction is authorized with a one-time unique dynamic security code.  All major credit card companies are on board, as are a growing number of banking institutions and credit unions. Unfortunately, older iPhone models are not able to use the Apple Pay feature.

Ideally, a customer would wait in line to buy food. After ordering, the cashier rings up the cost, and the customer pulls out the phone, holds the Touch ID button, waves it in front of the reader and the payment is complete. This should take, what, ten seconds? Can we dream of an in-stadium experience where we won’t miss two innings waiting in line for a hot dog and a beer?

Alex Martins, chief executive of the Orlando Magic, told the New York Times earlier this week:

“One of the biggest pieces of feedback we get from our fans is that the food and beverage lines are too long,” Mr. Martins said in an interview. “It keeps them from going to the concession stand because they don’t want to miss the action. This, and technologies like Apple Pay, will speed up our service.”

To be fair, it’s not like what Apple is doing is anything new. Samsung, MasterCard and Google Wallet have been around for some time. The optimism is that because of Apple’s reputation and giant consumer draw, any problems that existed with previous tap-to-pay services will evaporate.

For now, the Apple Pay experience is raw. Anecdotal reports reflect retailers don’t know how to use the system correctly, if at all. And that Apple training retailers would go a long way to create a much smoother experience. Fast Company’s technology editor Harry McCracken went a week without his wallet, only using Apple Pay to make his Whole Foods and McDonald’s purchases. And while he faced plenty of problems, McCracken, as he wrote in October, is hopeful about the future of the product.

But even though my experience with Apple Pay wasn’t perfect, and despite obstacles such as recalcitrant retailers, I had a good time using it. I expect to reach for my phone rather than my billfold quite often from now on—partly for convenience’s sake, and partly for the privacy and security benefits of being able to pay a store without sharing any information about myself. And if mobile payments finally start to catch on—which seems likely to me—we could end up looking back on last week as the most important moment so far in the history of the technology.

Whatever it takes for me to get my beer quicker.

(Image via Tom Baker)





Seth loves baseball and anything with Sriracha in it. Follow him on Twitter @sethkeichline.

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duh
9 years ago

considering ive been using isis mobile wallet for over a year now with my samsung galaxy s4 i am not impressed with this. apple is so far behind other companies but because of name recognition this comes in to play. the fact that its only compatible with the 6 is just an example of apple purposely outdating its older products just so consumers feel they need to upgrade.

Bobo Polaroids
9 years ago
Reply to  duh

It’s only compatible with the iPhone 6/6+ models because previous iPhones didn’t have an NFC chip. It’s a hardware restriction.

The idea that Apple could have Apple Pay working on older-gen iOS devices but prefers to force people to upgrade is completely nonsensical. It would be in Apple’s best interest to give as many people as possible access to Apple Pay via their devices, even if that access wasn’t directly tied to sales of new Apple hardware, because increasing that consumer base increases Apple Pay’s market penetration, which increases adoption by retailers, which is the thing Apple needs to happen in order for Apple Pay to become a selling point for a broader range of consumers.

Deelron
9 years ago
Reply to  duh

It’s not exactly the as say, Google wallet is either, most notably the form of tokenization used by Apple (device based and biometrically secured) is inherently more secure then Google’s cloud based system. For me, if the choice was between the two, I’d be much more comfortable with Apple’s solution then Google’s.

All that being said, the more players in the space (and ones not playing with garbage like CurrentC) the better.