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Tag: Discover

  • Apple Pay Gets Discover, Square, UK Launch [WWDC]

    Apple Pay Gets Discover, Square, UK Launch [WWDC]

    As you may know, Apple unveiled iOS 9 today, and that includes some updates to Apple Pay.

    For one, Discover will come on board starting in the fall, at which point Apple Pay will work with all major credit card networks. Also coming on board is Square, which will launch a new reader that accepts Apple Pay.

    Next month, Apple Pay will be accepted at over a million locations in the U.S., which is four times more than when it launched. According to the company, merchants are seeing over a 2X increase in checkout rate among customers using Apple Pay in apps.

    Later this month, users will be able to buy stuff from stores on Pinterest thanks to integration with Buyable Pins.

    Apple Pay will also launch in the U.K. next month. By this fall, it will work with about 70% of credit and debit cards in the U.K. Over 250,000 locations in the U.K. are already ready to accept it.

    Apple also announced that it has renamed Passbook to Wallet.

    Image via Apple

  • Apple Pay Continues To Gain Momentum

    Apple Pay Continues To Gain Momentum

    Apple released its financial results for its fiscal year 2015 Q2 on Monday. The company had a record quarter largely thanks to iPhone sales, as well as strong performances by Mac and the App Store.

    During the ensuing conference call, CEO Tim Cook talked a little bit about the momentum Apple Pay continues to gain. Here’s what he had to say about that (via SeekingAlpha’s transcript):

    We’re seeing great momentum with Apple Pay. Discover announced today that its cardmembers in the United States will be able to make contactless payments in participating stores through Apple Pay beginning this fall.

    And last month, we said that the number of locations accepting Apple Pay has tripled, and we continue to see great progress with merchants. Best Buy, which has been a longtime, strong partner of ours, has just announced that it’s now offering Apple Pay in-app and later this year will offer Apple Pay in all of their U.S. stores.

    And merchants aren’t the only ones jumping onboard. Earlier this month, a leading healthcare payment network announced acceptance of Apple Pay for its clients, so over 50 major hospitals across the country, including Stanford Healthcare and Aspen Valley, will accept Apple Pay this year for copays and bill payments at registration and check in.

    Both Discover and Best Buy put out press releases about their Apple Pay integrations on Monday.

    Best Buy said customers can immediately start using Apple Pay to make purchases in the Best Buy app on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. An update is now available in the App Store.

    “Today’s consumers have many different ways to spend their money and we want to give our customers as many options as possible in how they pay for goods and services at Best Buy,” it said. “The acceptance of Apple Pay in the Best Buy app is the latest enhancement for our mobile platform.”

    The company also noted that it is opening a technology innovation office in Seattle this summer, which will largely focus on mobile.

    “In addition to paying in stores with iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and Apple Watch, millions of cardmembers can also use Apple Pay with iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 when paying for goods and services within apps beginning this fall,” Discover said of its integration.

    “As the mobile payments landscape matures, Discover remains committed to giving cardmembers secure options for using their cards and mobile devices,” added Diane Offereins, Discover’s president of payment services. “Discover’s focus on simplicity and value for our cardmembers aligns well with the way Apple Pay makes purchases easy and convenient.”

    The company notes that when cardmembers add their credit or debit card to Apple Pay, the actual card numbers are not stored on the device or on Apple servers.

    As part of the agreement, it said, Discover Network will enable eligible financial institutions, including Discover Debit issuers, to let their cardholders use Apple Pay.

    Earlier this year, Apple partnered with USA Technologies to make Apple Pay available in over 200,000 vending machines, laundry pay stations, parking meters, etc.

    Image via Best Buy

  • Spotify Discover Now Available to All Via Web Player

    Spotify Discover Now Available to All Via Web Player

    Last December, Spotify announced a brand new “discovery” feature that harnessed the streaming music company’s data on your past streaming habits and various recommendation engines to give users suggestions on what to listen to next. Today, Spotify is making the Discover tab available to all users via the web player.

    “With the Discover page, we’re making good on our promise of helping you choose what to listen to when faced with millions of songs,” says Gustav Söderström, Chief Product Officer, at Spotify. “We’ve made your listening experience more personal, more social and more current.”

    The Discover tab features a bunch of different ways to find new music as well as more information on music you currently love. Personalized recommendations suggest artists and tracks based on what you’ve listened to and who you’ve followed. You’ll also see the music and playlists shared by your Spotify friends. And a related music feature also gives you suggestions on what to play next, based on the song you’re currently listening to.

    Spotify harnesses the power of Pitchfork, Songkick, and Tunigo (which they just purchased) for these recommendations. According to the company, it’s now available for everyone on the web and will continue to roll out to Spotify’s desktop and mobile apps in the coming weeks.

    Check it out today over at play.spotify.com/discover.

  • Twitter App Update Streamlines Discovery and Search

    Twitter has just announced some search and discovery updates to their iOS and Android apps as well as mobile.twitter.com that they say will help users “better find what’s most important to you when you’re on the go.”

    What they’ve done is tweaked their discovery and search functions to provide a single steam of information – tweets, users, activity, trends. According to Twitter, it will all be in one place now.

    The Discover tab now aggregates all kinds of activity into one stream on both iOS and Android. Twitter has also added the ability to access activity and trends from the top of the Discover tab.

    Search has been updated in a similar fashion:

    “Search results now surface the most relevant mix of Tweets, photos, and accounts, all in one stream (similar to the stream in Discover). We’ve also added a new search button to Twitter for iPhone, letting you search from anywhere within the app. (This button was already available in the Android and iPad apps.) Look for the magnifying glass icon next to the button you use to compose a Tweet,” says Twitter.

    Twitter has also updated the @connect tab, which now defaults to showing all types of interactions. You can go into your settings and set the default to simply show @mentions if that’s what you want.

    Also, they changed the way the apps manage links to outside sites. If you click on a URL inside a tweet, you now go directly to the site no matter where you are in the Twitter app. Before, you would have to tap the tweet as a whole, go to and expanded view, and then click on the outside link to be directed out.

    Twitter says that the updates should be available in both the App Store and Google Play, but as of the writing of this article neither seem to be available yet. We’ll let you know when they drop.

  • Twitter Updates Apps with Media-Rich Discovery, Better Search

    Twitter has been working to make the tweet a self-contained entity for some time now. They want the tweet to contain all of the media that a user needs to get the full experience – with no need to click away to access photos, videos, or even article content. These fuller tweets have existed on desktop for some time, and today Twitter’s bringing that rich experience to mobile, inside the discover tab.

    The mobile discover tab now features media-rich tweets that allows users to preview photos and article summaries without ever tapping on the tweet.

    It’s all thanks to Twitter Cards:

    “Using Twitter cards, you’ll now see Tweets in Discover with links to news and photos rather than the former story previews which were not interactive. And supporting Twitter cards on the backend means we can more directly improve the user experience in our native apps, too. You’ll see content from cards partners display as a preview in the stream, so that you’ll get headlines and publication names for story summaries and photo previews rather than shortened URLs,” says Twitter engineering manager Daniel Loreto.

    The mobile Discover tab has also become more like the desktop Discover section. Now you can “view all tweets” to see relevant content from users in your network.

    “We want Discover to be the place where you find the best of that content relevant to you, even if you don’t necessarily know everyone involved,” says Loreto.

    Twitter has also improved on their search function, for both the desktop and mobile experience. Photos and videos are now front and center, as Twitter has placed them above the tweet stream in search results for people, events, and hashtags.

    Twitter has also added the ability for users to see the context behind the tailored ranking of search results.

    “About a year ago we launched tailored ranking of your search results, but until now you couldn’t see why a specific Tweet might matter more to you. Now you can see context like who favorited or retweeted right there in the Tweet,” says Twitter.

    You can download the new version of both the iOS and Android apps today.

  • Twitter Turns Discover Tab into Media-Rich Stream of Tweets

    Twitter’s Discover tab was launched last December in an effort to give new Twitter users suggestions on who to follow, help them find friends, and browse categories. Another part of the Discover tab provided top news stories from around the network, as tweeted by influential users.

    Today, the company has announced an upgrade to the Discover tab that will provide a media-rich tweet stream. It’s “what’s happening now, tailored for you,” says Twitter.

    Here’s what they had to say on the Twitter blog:

    Last December, we introduced Discover to bring you essential information from the web. This May, we added stronger signals and a new design that made it more personal for you with better stories and Tweets from people you know.

    Now we’re improving Discover again: when you visit the Discover tab on twitter.com, you’ll see a continuous stream of Tweets, which automatically expand to show you the most relevant stories and most engaging photos.

    The big change here is that now, the tweet stream shows the tweets already expanded with media, either in the form of articles, photos, or videos.

    Mobile seems to be unaffected by this change. Twitter says that the new Discover tweet stream will roll out to users gradually.

  • PayPal Payment Option Coming To Millions More Stores

    PayPal Payment Option Coming To Millions More Stores

    PayPal has partnered with Discover to make PayPal a payment option in millions of stores across the United States. Any store that accepts Discover, will accept PayPal as an option. PayPal already has over 50 million active users in the U.S.

    16 national retailers already accept PayPal. These include: Home Depot, Abercrombie & Fitch, Advance Auto Parts, Aéropostale, American Eagle Outfitters, Barnes & Noble, Foot Locker, Guitar Center, Jamba Juice, JC Penney, Jos. A. Bank Clothiers, Nine West, Office Depot, Rooms To Go, Tiger Direct and Toys “R” Us. Obviously this new partnership will add to that list significantly.

    “It’s astonishing to think that in less than a year we’ve brought PayPal to the point-of-sale at more than 3,000 brand name national retailers in the U.S., launched a global mobile payments solution for small businesses with PayPal Here, and announced relationships with leading terminal vendors all over the world,” says PayPal’s VP of Retail and Prepaid Products, Don Kingsborough.

    “The market has been looking for leadership as the payments space evolves and we think this relationship starts to deliver it,” he says. “It is a milestone for PayPal as it enables us to innovate at scale.”

    Merchants won’t have to make any hardware of software upgrades to offer PayPal, so it should be a pretty painless process.

    Implementation of the partnership (in terms of in-store availability) begins next year.

  • You Can Now Save Your Discover Card To Google Wallet

    Earlier this month, Google revealed a cloud-based version of Google Wallet, which supports Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover.

    Today, Google discussed a new way to save cards to Google Wallet, beginning with Discover, the first card issuer to launch an implementation of its new Save To Wallet API for Payment Cards. Google says it is working with other card issuers.

    “Discover securely transmits all required information directly to Google Wallet,” says Google Payments Commerce Business Development Manager Frank Young. “You can then select your Discover Card to be the primary method the Google Wallet app will use for in-store purchases, or when shopping online from Google Play or other merchants that accept Google Wallet.”

    “You’ll continue to earn rewards on every purchase you make,” he adds. “Discover has also provided Google Wallet with card imagery for the Discover More Card, so you can easily identify your virtual Discover card in your mobile wallet.”

    Discover on Google Wallet

    To save a Discover Card to Google Wallet, simply go to discover.com/googlewallet, sign into your Discover account, click “Add Your Card,” sign into your Google account, and you’ll be all set.

    Learn about the Save To Wallet APIs here.