I used passbook this week for the first time through the Starbucks App to see what all the hype (or lack thereof) is about. My first impressions is this is not nearly as convenient, at least for me, as compared to NFC mobile payments, and I really think Apple missed the boat by seemingly choosing this option instead. This is based on a few key observations, some of which Renee noted in his article about Passbook being this year's Newstand. I will list as follows:
- one of my biggest criticisms is the user experience is very cumbersome. You have to download an app, navigate within the app, sign up if you are not a member, link up your account, add funding (in most cases). Then the balance has to sync over to the passbook card. Seemed like I had to manually sync to get my balance over. This is all way too much work as compared to simply pulling out my phone and holding it next to something to pay. When it comes to mobile payments, people at the end of the day are searching for convenience, not a pretty app.
- next, I tried to use the option to have passbook recognize when I am in a Starbucks and pop up automatically. Problem with that is I work a block away from Starbucks so it kept popping up in my lockscreen (annoying!). Appears that the GPS is not precise enough, which may not necessarily be an inherent problem with passbook. I could see in the future if passbook got so popular that everyone used it, just walking down a street passing by a handful of stores would cause mutiple pop ups to appear in the lockscreen without you neccesarily going into stores.
- one of the biggest problems for me, which I realize might not be a problem for most, is how this app draws funds. In most cases, you will probably have to link a CC to the app, where it will draw funds manually, or automatically when your balance gets low enough. The reason that creates a problem for me is because I am extremely anal with my budgeting. I purchase everything on my debit card in order to code the purchase to a particular category and manage my monthly budget. If I am, let's say, using Passbook to buy something at Target, it is just going to pull from the funded balance, and I will have no control over categorizing the expense and monitoring my budget. When I funded the intial chunk of money into the card, I would have had no idea how to categorize the debit to my account since the money had not been spent. In a possible future world taken over by passbook, this would create a huge problem for me. On the other hand, if I had NFC, it would just draw straight from my account in a single charge, so I could easily code the expense. I suppose Passbook could rework the funding so each purchase pulls striaght from your linked account instead of a funded balance, but not sure if this will happen.
- Also not sure why Passbook needs all of these unwieldy cards to accomplish the same thing. Why can't they just have one QR reader that will recognize which store you are in, what customer rewards you have, etc. Anyone ever use LevelUp? So much easier.
Anyway, those are my first impressions of this year's new addition. Thought people might like to hear. Leave your feedback on your experience with this app.
Thanks
- one of my biggest criticisms is the user experience is very cumbersome. You have to download an app, navigate within the app, sign up if you are not a member, link up your account, add funding (in most cases). Then the balance has to sync over to the passbook card. Seemed like I had to manually sync to get my balance over. This is all way too much work as compared to simply pulling out my phone and holding it next to something to pay. When it comes to mobile payments, people at the end of the day are searching for convenience, not a pretty app.
- next, I tried to use the option to have passbook recognize when I am in a Starbucks and pop up automatically. Problem with that is I work a block away from Starbucks so it kept popping up in my lockscreen (annoying!). Appears that the GPS is not precise enough, which may not necessarily be an inherent problem with passbook. I could see in the future if passbook got so popular that everyone used it, just walking down a street passing by a handful of stores would cause mutiple pop ups to appear in the lockscreen without you neccesarily going into stores.
- one of the biggest problems for me, which I realize might not be a problem for most, is how this app draws funds. In most cases, you will probably have to link a CC to the app, where it will draw funds manually, or automatically when your balance gets low enough. The reason that creates a problem for me is because I am extremely anal with my budgeting. I purchase everything on my debit card in order to code the purchase to a particular category and manage my monthly budget. If I am, let's say, using Passbook to buy something at Target, it is just going to pull from the funded balance, and I will have no control over categorizing the expense and monitoring my budget. When I funded the intial chunk of money into the card, I would have had no idea how to categorize the debit to my account since the money had not been spent. In a possible future world taken over by passbook, this would create a huge problem for me. On the other hand, if I had NFC, it would just draw straight from my account in a single charge, so I could easily code the expense. I suppose Passbook could rework the funding so each purchase pulls striaght from your linked account instead of a funded balance, but not sure if this will happen.
- Also not sure why Passbook needs all of these unwieldy cards to accomplish the same thing. Why can't they just have one QR reader that will recognize which store you are in, what customer rewards you have, etc. Anyone ever use LevelUp? So much easier.
Anyway, those are my first impressions of this year's new addition. Thought people might like to hear. Leave your feedback on your experience with this app.
Thanks
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