“If today were the last day of your life, would you want to do what you are about to do today?” (Steve Jobs)
As the Winter Holidays begin, Walt Disney has made some major announcements about the changes in their payment systems. The people heading to the world’s most esteemed theme park may now rarely need to pull out their credit cards in order to make payments.
Changes in Payment Methods
According to an official statement from Disney, their massive theme park and resort in Orlando City will now begin accepting contactless forms of payment such as the highly acclaimed Apple Pay and Google Wallet. The changes as of now are fully functional and started functioning Wednesday December, 24th.
The changes are expected to cover almost every aspect of the park including the stores, bars and quick-service restaurant and ticket booths. But, the company said in their statement that table-service restaurants and places utilizing the portable payment terminals will be excluded from these payment method changes for now.
Apple Pay and Google Wallet will work through RFID chips
The theme park had already begun transitioning to contactless payments with the advent of its new ticketing system. The Apple Pay and Google Wallet systems will make use of the already existing RFID system which is in place for the theme park’s MyMagic+ program which has water-proof wrist band tickets that resort guests can use to make payments for food and Walt Disney Merchandise.
Changes at Walt Disney World are just the beginning
The Walt Disney World is the biggest theme park and resort out of the six Disney theme parks that exist in the world. The park has an annual attendance of around 18 million visitors per year. The company has unveiled plans of changing the payment systems at the smaller Disneyland theme park in California. The changes in the California theme park would begin sometime next year.
Disney and Apple Pay
Disney was one of the first major companies to jump on the mobile payments bandwagon with Apple. Disney announced its loyalty when the Apple Pay program was launched back in October. Disney has already agreed to revamp all of its retail stores to include and support the payment methods.
Apple Pay and the future of Contactless Payments
While Apple Pay is still not universally accepted; it must be admitted that Apple has gained more traction in the contactless payment department when compared to its competitors like Softcard and Google Wallet. According to Apple, the company has now enlisted more than dozens of new stores and banks which will accept the Apple Pay payment platform and Apple has also said that the Apple Pay has now begun supporting credit cards which is major news in a country where 9%of the purchases are made through credit cards.
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