Coffee in San Francisco, like everything else there, is pretty expensive these days. Shops typically charge somewhere in the $5 range for their standard cup of joe, a massive premium compared to most other parts of the country. One local coffee joint, however, made a drastic and exclusive slash to their prices in what one Twitter user called a "peak SF" move.
PEAK SAN FRANCISCO:
$5 for a small coffee without Apple Pay, $1 with Apple Pay pic.twitter.com/BImtUw53WO
— Dr. Data&Politics&?&?️? (@dataandpolitics) August 10, 2018
AKA consumer goods will cost you 500% more if you can’t afford a $1000 phone.
— Dr. Data&Politics&?&?️? (@dataandpolitics) August 10, 2018
The above photo was taken at a location of Reveille Coffee, a highly regarded spot in SF with multiple locations around the city. As a quick clarification, although the above sign says "No Cash," the user who posted this photo later noted that the shop's main register did accept actual currency.
Folks on Twitter who saw the photo responded in confusion and surprise as to why Apple Pay users got such an exclusive treatment when electronic pay channels are numerous these days.
Coming from the U.K. this is so weird. NFC/wireless payments are accepted everywhere. Be that card, Apple or android pay. Why does America have such a hard time accepting this?
— Tom Campbell (@1192tom) August 11, 2018
That's a little absurd. Apple Pay is a normal contactless payment and functionally not much different from Google Pay or even a contactless card payment. What do they get out of charging such wildly different rates?
— Patrick Bloss (@PatrickBloss) August 14, 2018
Foodbeast spoke to the Reveille Coffee shop team at the location this sign was posted at. They clarified that the massive discount was a partnered promotion they did in conjunction with Apple Pay, and only lasted for the weekend of August 10-12. If you went into the coffee shop today with Apple Pay, you'd have to pay the same price as everybody else.
Still, one has to wonder: Why would somebody like Apple Pay need to do a paid promotion with a local coffee house? Apple has had the technology since 2014, and it was just top-ranked by Consumer Reports in the peer-to-peer payment category.
One possibility is that Apple Pay wants to gain some traction in the smaller transactions space. Getting thousands of users to utilize the software at coffee shops and the like is probably more valuable to Apple than a tiny number of high-value transactions made with their technology. Thus, using paid promotions like the one at Reveille Coffee could be a move to get people to use it in more everyday environments.
Another idea is that Apple could be trying out the promotions as a way for people to purchase through them rather than through massive online retail giants, say, Amazon.
Amazon gives you discounts for being a Prime member and buying stuff through their system, but that's limited to the services they own and control (ie. Whole Foods). With Apple Pay, you could potentially get competing discounts by using the software in every single transaction you perform for every service. That would definitely make a whole bunch of users flock to Apple for their everyday needs rather than Amazon.
Regardless of what Apple's strategy is with the Apple Pay promotions, it'll be interesting to see where else they continue to drop these massive discounts at as whatever program they have going on moves forward.
