Rishi Taparia - Issue #106
First, Happy Diwali to any and all celebrating! This week we look at Apple Pay’s recent dominance, the latest move in the Go-Jek v. Grab saga, McDonald’s delivery, reading books on Instagram, the panic of parenting and more. Enjoy!
Apple Pay Overtakes Starbucks as Top Mobile Payment App in the US
Last May we talked about how Starbucks was the most widely used mobile payment method. While not surprising then, I wrote back then that we’d see those numbers shift over time as NFC terminals saw greater adoption and use cases became more common.
Starbucks has a daily use case with the relevant technology in all their stores that guarantee acceptance, compared to the NFC based payment methods put forth by Apple and Google that aren’t universally accepted and, compared to a card swipe, are still more complicated. However, I do think the chart below will turn out to be wildly off in the out years. As NFC enabled terminals become the norm, consumer EMV adoption gets to 75%+ and lines slow down, I believe Apple Pay and Google Pay become the better experience that result in more usage. This will have them well outpacing Starbucks when it comes to usage (there are simply more things people buy than Starbucks coffee).
According to the lastest eMarketer report, Apple Pay in particular has grown faster than original estimates. The most recent study finds the US has 30.3 million Apple Pay users, with represents almost 50% of total mobile based payment users (47.3% to be exact).
Apple Pay has benefited from the spread of new point-of-sale (POS) systems that work with the NFC signals Apple Pay runs on,” said eMarketer principal analyst Yory Wurmser. “The same trend should also help Google Pay and Samsung Pay, but they will continue to split the Android market.”
Technology for proximity mobile payments is gaining traction, especially at frequently used retailers like grocery stores. According to Digital Trends, Apple Pay is expected to be available in 70% of US retailers by the end of 2019. The strong uptake prompted eMarketer to revise its figures upward. And while the Starbucks app has enjoyed around a 40% market share of mobile payments users for a few years, its growth potential is more limited since it can only be used at Starbucks stores.
#nailedit
Gojek’s 35-Year-Old Chief Is Joining Indonesia’s New Cabinet
We’ve talked a lot about the battle raging between Go-Jek and Grab. Both companies started in Southeast Asia, the byproduct of HBS graduates who moved back home to bring ride sharing to the region. Both companies have expanded both geographically and strategically, entering into new markets and rolling out new, more expansive product lines including payments and delivery. Both companies have raised multiples of billions of dollars and are well beyond unicorn status. This week’s episode in the saga adds an extra layer of intrigue. Nadiem Makarim, Go-Jek’s CEO, is stepping down from the company to join the Indonesian President’s new cabinet as the Minister for Education and Culture (making him the Minister of Transportation would have been a bit too on the nose). The signal is clear: checkmate for Grab in Indonesia.
McDonald’s UK boosted by rapid delivery growth
McDonalds - eat in, drive through or get delivery? The burger giant announced a Q3 earnings miss against its original sales forecasts. There’s a whole host of reasons why, but I’m going to ignore those and instead talk about an interesting factoid about their UK business. According to Paul Pomroy, the UK CEO, the McDelivery partnership with Uber Eats has surged in popularity.
The chain said that delivery is now available across 950 of its sites across the UK and accounts for just over 10% of all its UK business. On September 18, the company received a record 124,000 delivery orders, it added.
It said that it has also benefited from its launch of the My McDonald’s app last year, which has had 3.6 million downloads since it was launched.
You read that right. 10% of all of McDonalds UK business was done via delivery. When you’re ordering for delivery there are no shortage of options. For a fast food chain built on the premise of cheaply, quickly and consistently made food to see delivery take off has to be a pleasant surprise. I expect to see many more delivery companies (DoorDash, Uber Eats, Postmates et al) use these numbers as proof of value when striking deals with enterprise chains.
Now, for my UK readers: What happened on September 18th (a Wednesday) that can explain 124,000 delivery McDonalds orders!
What I learned documenting the last male northern white rhino’s death
There are no more male Northern White rhinos in existence. The last, Sudan, died in 2018. This piece by the nature photographer who documented the failed reproductive effort and Sudan’s last moments is a touching look at how, by putting ourselves in the broader context of nature, we can more easily remember life’s fragility.
Stories about people and the human condition are also about nature. If you dig deep enough behind virtually every human conflict, you will find an erosion of the bond between humans and the natural world around them….These keepers spend more time protecting the northern white rhinos than they do with their own children. Watching a creature die—one who is the last of its kind—is something I hope never to experience again. It felt like watching our own demise…When we see ourselves as part of nature, we understand that saving nature is really about saving ourselves.
Hundreds of thousands of people read novels on Instagram. They may be the future
Last year, the New York Public Library released an experiment to put the full text of books in its Instagram Stories. It was a novel way (pun obviously intended) to get the content into the hands of readers where they are already spending time - convenient, easily digestible and purpose built for the medium. As the director of the NYPL puts it, “We’re happy to meet people where they are.” With over 300,000 people now reading books this way, this is a fascinating case study on product development and adoption, one that should resonate with anyone trying to get users to adopt products. Go to where the people are, don’t expect them to come to you. Don’t expect habits to change over night. Don’t put artificial hurdles in front of your users if you don’t need to. You’re in a game trying to buy people’s time away from other competition. It’s a sellers market and in this case you’re trying to buy time. Make it as easy as possible.
Parenting and Panic
My 13 month old son started walking this week. All of a sudden life has instantly changed for the entire family. His world has suddenly expanded to include more closets, cupboards and things on table tops than ever before. My wife and I have now unlocked the next level of parenting panic as he can now get himself into even greater trouble than before and we find ourselves trying to figure out how to baby proof even more of the house. This article by UChicago philosopher Agnes Callard does a masterful job of articulating all of the feels around parenting.
Parenting has a lie built right into its name: we should’ve called it childing, because that’s who is in charge…When you’re a parent, there’s a story you are deeply invested in, it’s not your story and you’re not going to get to know how it turns out—at least, not unless you’re very unlucky. Pretending one controls the story with one’s “parenting choices” is one coping strategy; convincing oneself that the story is already written in the genetic stars is another. The truth is, the story is not yet written, you care tremendously how it goes and you don’t get to write it. Which is all to say, the panic is justified…Parenting is a hostage situation: you’re in the car, but your child is the one driving it—and he doesn’t know how to drive. You can’t get out, because you decided to love him before you knew who he was—before he even was anyone. Your life split at that point into multiple tracks, and one of them is not under your control. The worst part is: you can’t even cover your eyes. You have to keep them open, to try to talk him through it. He needs your help, at least for now. One day, of course, he will stop noticing you sitting there.
His first real steps!
Quote I’m thinking about: “What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.” - Viktor Frankl