Cass Sunstein, legal scholar and former Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, said that Apple's new simplified payment system could lead consumers to overspend.
"A warning for prospective users: When consumers don't use cash, and when payment is simple, they often end up spending a lot more than they otherwise would -- and regretting it later," Sunstein wrote in a Bloomberg OpEd yesterday.
He referenced a recent study conducted in Denmark that found college students spent significantly more on beer and coffee when they paid with debit cards rather than cash [PDF]. The reason seems intuitive: when we pay with cards, we're not physically witnessing money drain from our wallet. Credit cards subtract money from a difficult-to-imagine electronic bank account.
Indeed, at Apple's big iPhone 6 unveiling this week, the company boasted about how it could turn a normal two-minute credit card transaction into something that took only about five seconds.
This wouldn't be a problem, if it weren't for the fact that many (many) consumers have poor spending habbits. As of 2012, CNN notes that the average American has nearly $16,000 in credit card debt.
The frustrating thing about Sunstein's argument is that even if he's right, what is the solution? Apple is not responsible for making consumers more financially intelligent. Indeed, it has a fuduciary responsibility to its shareholders to get consumers to spend as much as possible.