瞄準移動支付市場 蘋果錢包蓄勢待發

Apple appears poised to change the way Americans pay for stuff. Or at least, it will try.

蘋果（Apple）似乎要改變美國人的支付方式了。或者至少，他們準備嘗試一下。

Sources confirm several reports that the iPhone 6, expected to be introduced on Tuesday, will include technology that will turn the device into a mobile wallet that could be used to pay for items at retail stores. Apple’s mobile wallet will be based on NFC, or near field communications, a technology that uses radio communications to transmit data and that works in a growing number of point-of-sale systems. The iPhone’s Touch ID fingerprint scanner will be used to authenticate users, and Apple AAPL -0.83% has teamed up with credit card companies to make the service broadly useful, the sources, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, said.

消息源確認了iPhone 6將包含一項新技術，可以將移動設備作爲錢包使用，從而在商店購買物品。這項移動錢包技術將採用NFC，也就是利用無線電來發射數據的近場通信技術（near field communications）。該技術已被越來越多的銷售終端系統所採用。匿名消息源表示，iPhone將採用Touch ID指紋掃描來鑑別用戶身份，蘋果也將與信用卡公司合作，擴大這項服務的應用範圍。

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.

蘋果的一位女發言人拒絕對此發表評論。

Apple, which already has payment credentials for some 800 million people globally through iTunes accounts, has long been expected to make a bid to dominate mobile payments.

蘋果通過iTunes賬戶，已經獲得了全球範圍內大約8億用戶的支付授權。公司要爭取主宰移動支付領域，這也早在人們預料之中。

While Apple’s move is certain to shake up the mobile wallet market, the company’s success is far from guaranteed. And it comes at a time when the utility of digital wallets is being called into question, even as other forms of mobile payments are taking off.

儘管蘋果此舉必然會引起移動錢包市場的震動，但蘋果能否成功卻遠未確定。數字錢包的實用性究竟如何尚存疑問，而其他移動支付手段也正在逐漸興起。

Indeed, there is no longer a mobile payments market, but rather, several mobile payments markets.

確實，這不是一個移動支付市場，而是好幾個移動支付市場。

Mobile wallets, which were expected to take the world by storm, have languished in the past few years. Giants like Google, PayPal, wireless carriers, and major retail chains, as well as promising startups like Square, have all struggled to make wallets popular. After years of effort, just $3.1 billion in purchases came from mobile wallets last year, according to Javelin Strategy, a research firm. That’s just a tiny fraction of the roughly $4.5 trillion in annual retail payments in the United States.

本以爲將如風暴般席捲全球的移動錢包，在過去幾年中可謂命途多舛。谷歌（Google）、貝寶（Paypal）等巨頭、無線運營商、大型連鎖店，以及Square等前途光明的初創公司，在推廣移動錢包上都步履維艱。根據研究公司Javelin Strategy的數據，在多年的努力後，通過移動錢包完成的交易額在去年僅有31億美元。相對於美國去年零售交易額的大約4.5萬億美元來說，這只是極小的一部分。

The challenges have been myriad. Google’s Wallet has been hamstrung by the company’s inability to get enough partners—most notably merchants and credit card companies—on board. Google also struggled to overcome roadblocks put up by some wireless carriers, who were promoting the own rival wallet.

這其中遭遇的挑戰數不勝數。由於谷歌無法找到足夠的合作伙伴——尤其是商家和信用卡公司，公司的錢包產品萎靡不振。谷歌還難以克服某些無線運營商設置的障礙，後者也在推廣自己的錢包類產品。

That service, which is backed by Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, struggled as well, first because it was plagued by delays, and later, because of its ill-fated name: Isis. After the emergence of the violent jihadist group in Iraq by the same name earlier this year, the carriers announced that they would ditch the brand. Just this week, CEO Mike Abbott announced that the service would be renamed Softcard.

而由威瑞森通訊（Verizon）、美國電話電報公司（AT&T）和T-Mobile開發的錢包服務也一樣經歷着困頓。起初是因爲這項服務一直跳票，隨後又因爲那個倒黴的名字：Isis。隨着今年早些時候擁有同樣名字的伊拉克暴力聖戰組織興起，運營商宣佈他們準備放棄這個品牌名。就在這周，Isis的首席執行官邁克o阿爾伯特宣佈這項服務將更名爲Softcard。

Square, for its part, pulled its Wallet app in May, replacing it with Order, an app that allows users to order ahead and skip the line at local restaurants.

而另一方面，Square在今年5月放棄了其錢包業務Wallet，推出了新產品Order，這項應用可以讓顧客提前預定餐館，免去了排隊的煩惱。

From a consumer standpoint, all these efforts suffered from the same pitfalls: acceptance at merchants was spotty and paying by phone was not necessarily more convenient than paying with plastic.

從顧客的角度來看，這些努力都走入了同一個誤區：並非所有商家都接受這種支付方式，而用手機支付也並沒有比信用卡支付更方便，這讓它顯得可有可無。

Some analysts believe that Apple, with its market clout and experience designing consumer products, could change the dynamics. In particular, the inclusion of NFC technology in the iPhone, could encourage more merchants to upgrade their point-of-sale system so they can accept mobile payments from both iPhones and the growing number of Android phones that are also equipped with NFC.

一些分析家相信，擁有強大市場影響力、擁有豐富的設計消費品經驗的蘋果能夠改變這一現狀。尤其是包含NFC技術的iPhone會促使更多的商家升級他們的銷售終端系統，從而接受iPhone以及越來越多同樣配有NFC技術的安卓（Android）手機的移動支付。

“Smartphones didn’t take off until Apple came in,” says Mary Monahan, research director for mobile at Javelin. “Tablets didn’t take off until Apple came in. A lot of people are hoping that this is a game changer.”

Javelin的移動產品研究總監瑪麗o莫納漢表示：“智能手機在蘋果加入後纔開始高速發展，平板電腦也是在蘋果加入後才廣泛流行起來。許多人希望蘋果能夠化腐朽爲神奇。”

But recent publicity about hacking into Apple accounts of celebrities could pose a new obstacle for the company.

但最近美國明星的蘋果賬戶被黑事件傳得沸沸揚揚，將會給蘋果造成新的麻煩。

“For this to work, Apple has to garner much more confidence in the security of what they offer,” says Tim Bajarin, a veteran Apple analyst with Creative Strategies.

Creative Strategies的資深蘋果分析師蒂姆o巴加林表示：“如果蘋果要在移動支付領域取得成功，就必須在安全性上獲得比現在多得多的信任。”

In the meantime, other parts of the mobile payment market are growing quickly. Javelin estimates consumers spend more than $56 billion in “mobile commerce” last year. The category includes not only e-commerce purchases made with mobile phones or tablets, but also purchases of services like rides through apps like Uber and Lyft, deliveries of food and merchandise through apps like Postmates and Seamless GrubHub, and others. Those in-app payments have quickly become a multi-billion business dominated by companies like PayPal’s Braintree and Stripe, one of the hottest payment companies to emerge in recent years.

與此同時，移動支付市場的其他領域正在蓬勃發展。Javelin估計消費者去年在“移動商務”上花費了超過560億美元。這不僅包括使用手機或平板電腦完成的網上購物，還包括通過應用購買服務，如Uber和Lyft的打車服務、Postmates和Seamless GrubHub的食物和商品快遞等等。這些通過應用實現的消費已經很快形成了規模達數十億美元的市場。貝寶的Braintree以及近年來最炙手可熱的支付公司Stripe成爲了該領域中的領頭羊。

Finally, mobile person-to-person payments, which are enabled by banks and by companies like PayPal and Square, are also growing, though the total number of transactions remain small. It’s not clear whether the iPhone’s mobile wallet will enable these kinds of transactions.

最後，由銀行以及貝寶和Square等公司提供的個人對個人（p2p）移動支付也在日漸成長，不過該領域的交易總額仍然較小。iPhone的移動錢包是否會支持這類交易，目前尚不得而知。