Steven Aquino writing for Forbes: Home Depot’s Rollout Of Apple Pay Reminds Apple Pay, Accessibility Are One

My friend Chance Miller reported this week for 9to5 Mac that Home Depot is ending its laggardness by finally beginning to roll out support for Apple Pay in its stores.

This should have happened years ago, but the next best time to do it is now, so I'm happy to see them finally make the turn. Although it is a bit wild to see it in 2024 when Home Depot was actually the largest Apple Pay partner when the service was introduced in 2015.

Of course, Aquino's beat is accessibility, so his angle is on the wins this is for customers who might find paying with a phone, watch, or tapping their card easier than traditional swipes or dips.

I’ve extolled the accessibility virtues of Apple Pay for this column, along at other outlets, numerous times since the service debuted a decade ago. The Cliff’s Notes version is Apple Pay is more than convenient; for a disabled person like myself, paying with cash and/or a physical credit cards, while perfectly fine, can be burdensome in many respects. There is a lot of cognitive/motor/visual skills required to take out one’s wallet, find the right card, insert it into the reader, and more. Depending on one’s needs, this user flow can be frustratingly inaccessible. By contrast, using Apple Pay on one’s iPhone (or Apple Watch) requires the device be placed nearest the NFC reader and, in Apple’s vaunted parlance, “it just works.”

Contactless payments are wonderful, and this is the part of the post where I clarify that while the Apple-centric press are calling this Home Depot adding Apple Pay, technically they're adding contactless payments, which means all contactless options, including Apple Pay, will work. Google Pay, Samsung Pay, PayPal, and simply tapping your card will all work as well.

Also Aquino:

Industry watchers like to bemoan Apple’s so-called “walled garden” of an ecosystem by arguing it locks people in, but that glosses over the idea that a considerable number of people choose to be locked in on their own volition. It’s entirely plausible to want to go all-in on Apple products precisely because of things like Apple Pay and the discrete suite of accessibility features.

I will simply add that legislative actions preventing unfair lock-in don't stop anyone from going all-in on Apple services, they simply make it easier to get out if you want — it's more options for more people, which makes things more accessible to all. Contactless payments are a great example since they all run on a common industry standard, so if you switch to Android, Google Pay or other wallets become available for your cards. If you don't want to use a phone, you can just tap the card in your wallet.

Anyway, I think contactless payments are great for accessibility, and whether you choose to do them with Apple Pay, Google Pay, or countless other ways they can happen, Home Depot will soon be able to take all of them.