To use Apple Pay, you must download the ExxonMobil app first.
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ExxonMobile has likely taken the indirect approach to avoid the hardware costs of fitting contactless readers to all its pumps.
This partnership was made possible to an updated version of the Speedpass+ app, which uses Global Positioning System to track drivers’ location and find the nearest gas station where Apple Pay is being offered.
Apple Pay went live Tuesday in more than 6,000 Exxon and Mobil-branded gas stations across 46 U.S. states. The phone talks to the register using a technology called near-field communication, or NFC. “They’ve been kind of begging us for this program”, says ExxonMobil’s W. Bryant Russell, who demoed the app for me at an Exxon station in the San Francisco Bay Area.
ExxonMobil is the first gas company to roll out a broad-based mobile payment system. Next, the company plans to begin introducing Apple Pay into its convenience stores along with linking its Plenti loyalty program to the service. You select the pump number and confirm the purchase using the iPhone’s TouchID fingerprint reader.
One one hand, paying via an app instead of swiping a card doesn’t seem like it would save all that much time, since you have to get out of the vehicle anyway to pump gas. If the app does not immediately recognize a location, the user will have to scan the QR code on the pump to register it.
My only concern with how the feature works at ExxonMobil-owned stations is that you have to start fueling within about 45 seconds, or else the app times out and you have to start over again.
The Speedpass Plus app is available on both iPhone and Android devices. “I would rather not be out here answering all those prompts, dipping cards, sweating”.
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Earlier this year ExxonMobil announced that they would be rolling out Apple Pay support for all of their locations, over the course of the year.
