@bentossell Ben, thank you for asking! This is my nerd hobby built into an app. I have been in the payments business for a number of years. I have also been a big fan of technology, FinTech, Startups and smart devices. I also love reading patents in general and Apple patents in specific. Through this research I surmised that Apple would release an NFC payments facilitation system back in 2011 and started writing about it on Quora (https://www.quora.com/profile/Br...). Understanding how payment industry works I went about researching the adoption of NFC payment terminals. It turns out there is currently no central reporting system on the actual NFC capability at the merchant level. Especially for small and medium sized merchants. When Apple Pay was released I was shocked that the number of Apple Pay merchant location was orders of magnitude lower then the results of my research. I loved Apple Pay and NFC in general and it motivated me to find a way to get this information out. So I learned to program in Xcode this past summer and went about creating Pay Finders. I have a friend fixing my ugly noob code, but at this point is just me and 1000s of Apple Pay enthusiasts that report Apple Pay locations and rate the transaction experience. I also have many Banks, processors, ISO merchant account sales people and merchants themselves self reporting new locations. This crowd sourced method along with deep relationships in the payments industry has allowed me to build the largest Apple Pay Location map in North America. I am currently testing active notifications that alert you when you enter a store that accepts Apple Pay. I am very excited for this feature as the app will not need to be open, it will just let you know and remind you that you can pay with your iPhone or Apple Watch. I am also building a large dataset for the UK, Europe Australia, South America and China and will have versions for each region soon. Really very honored to be listed here on Product Hunt! Thank you!
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