A great overview on Daring Fireball of the recent decision by some retailers to turn off their existing NFC systems to prevent customers from using the new Apple Pay system
“And the reason they don’t want to allow Apple Pay is because Apple Pay doesn’t give them any personal information about the customer. It’s not about security — Apple Pay is far more secure than any credit/debit card system in the U.S. It’s not about money — Apple’s tiny slice of the transaction comes from the banks, not the merchants. It’s about data.”
Increasingly the business model of retailers is less about selling stuff and more about data collection and manipulation. The fact that retailers want to collect and use data on customers isn’t the issue, it’s the fact that the vast majority of customers aren’t aware of this.