A couple of days ago, I stopped into my little neighborhood market to pick up a paper, and I noticed a new credit card reader sitting on the counter. It looked a lot like the old one, but it had an Apple Pay symbol on it.
I asked Les (the proprietor) if it cost a lot to put in a new point-of-sale system. He answered that it didn't cost anything. His credit card processor, he said, had provided the new hardware for free.
I found this interesting -- I have expressed doubts in the past that small merchants would buy into Apple Pay because of the costs of putting in new gear, employee training, and interchange fees on every purchase. (See "Apple Pay: Big questions remain about what U.S. merchants get out of it")
Well, that last one remains true, but the first two, it turns out, may not be barriers to merchants like Les accepting Apple Pay payments.
