A Target executive downplays the potential of Apple Pay

Mobile payments need to be about more than just paying for goods and services or consumers aren't going to adopt new methods.

Apple Pay is not a mobile payments breakthrough, according to an executive at Target Corp., a retail chain that is among the first to adopt the new Apple Inc. system that rolls out Oct. 20.

Bill Ramsey, the director of finance and retail services product design at Target, told attendees at the 2014 Mobile Payments Conference yesterday in the Chicago area that Apple Pay will have to do more than replace cash and plastic to qualify as a breakthrough. 'Payment is just one small event in the series of decisions that is everyday life,' he said.

For consumers, the payment experience can be fraught with emotion, he said: 'Emotions create less than logical behavior.' Anxiety is one emotion the Target team talks about a lot, he said. Consumers work hard for their money and deciding what to spend it on and how much to spend can bring up anxiety. If all the new technology does is mimic a current payment method-such as using a cell phone app that keeps a credit and debit card on file-it's not really an improvement, Ramsey said.

It's for that reason that Ramsey said Apple Pay, Apple's new payment method that links a debit or credit card to a mobile app, is not a breakthrough in mobile payment technology. A new payment method has to offer consumers added value or convenience.

Ramsey said all of this despite the fact that Target is one of the retailers signed on to use Apple Pay in its apps when the service officially launches later this month. Target will unveil new iPhone and iPad apps Target.

Target is also one of the retailers involved with Merchant Customer Exchange, or MCX. MCX is a group of retailers that joined together to create a merchant-friendly mobile wallet and payment system. Other retailers involved include Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Best Buy Co. and CVS Caremark Corp. CurrentC, MCX's mobile wallet, launched a pilot test earlier this year and retailers are expected to start promoting it more heavily in 2015.

Apple Pay uses near field communication, which requires retailers to have a checkout terminal equipped with NFC technology and a consumer to have a phone that is NFC-enabled. CurrentC, on the other hand, generates a unique 2-D bar code for each transaction, which retailers scan. Using bar codes lowers the barrier to entry for both consumers and retailers, said Ramsey, because it doesn't require any new hardware or technology for either.

Right now, Ramsey said, CurrentC is also payment-focused, as is Apple Pay. But because retailers have greater control over the system itself, incorporating other features into the system will be easier. One example would be to incorporate a loyalty program into the payment app, similar to what Starbucks has done with its mobile payment app.

Target is No. 37 in the recently published 2015 Internet Retailer Mobile 500.