In a live event held this afternoon, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced “an entirely new payment process” that the company has branded Apple Pay. The branding is the Apple logo with Pay next to it, so I am not sure if it is ApplePay or Apple Pay. Interestingly, Apple does not appear to own the ApplePay.com domain name.
If you visit ApplePay.com, you can see that the domain name is used by a company called AppleOne Payroll. I checked the Whois record as well as the historical Whois record, and it does not appear that the domain name has changed hands. Perhaps luckily for Apple, Inc., it appears that the company is not called Apple Pay, so perhaps there may be a greater chance at getting a deal done for the ApplePay.com domain name in the future. I am sure it would be expensive though. The ApplePay.com domain name was originally created back in 2002.
Because of the sensitive nature of making payments, especially payments via iPhone, I think it is important for Apple to own the ApplePay.com domain name. Assuming that Apple’s Apple Pay is a big hit considering all of the credit card partners and companies that will be accepting Apple Pay, I think they need to own this domain name.
I will add ApplePay.com to my Whois Monitor list and see if the domain name changes hands in the near future.
Apple also introduce the Apple Watch without the AppleWatch.com domain name.
They have the .ca version…
Good call!
They also got ApplePay.CO (registered today).
They also purchased ApplePay.tv.
A
and they got .tokyo ending too
AppleOne is a huge temp agency. I think they are nationwide even.
Is that the same company as the one that uses ApplePay.com?
Looks like the domain name owners have a trademark for payroll processing since 1998 as well.
This is one of the drawback of having a generic term as a company name. Branding becomes difficult and a delicate task but Apple can overcome this with its resources.