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Target Plans to Offer Apple Pay After Chip-and-PIN Card Upgrade

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Target CEO Brian Cornell spoke at Re/code's Code Conference in Palos Verdes, California today, where he confirmed that the company plans to offer in-store support for Apple Pay in the future. According to Cornell, while he'd love to have Apple Pay available "right now," support will not be coming until Target upgrades its system to support integrated circuit credit cards to comply with new standards.

Integrated circuit cards (or chip-and-PIN cards) replace the magnetic stripe on a credit card or debit card with an embedded microchip. The microchip communicates with a supported point-of-sale system to authenticate transactions. Chip-and-PIN cards are already used in many countries around the world because they're believed to be more secure than traditional credit cards. In the United States, retailers are being encouraged to adopt point-of-sale systems that support chip cards by the end of 2015.

Target is especially eager to move to a more secure transaction system following a major data breach in late 2013 that saw hackers obtaining payment information for approximately 40 million of its customers. The move is a major transition for Target, and Cornell says he doesn't want to "distract the team" with work on other payment systems.
"Our focus is on getting chip-and-PIN in place in time for the holidays," Cornell said at the second annual Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. "Down the line we want to accept all the types of payments that our guests want. But this decision was all about focus. ... It is a major undertaking to convert to chip-and-PIN, and I decided that we can't distract the team."
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Cornell says he has met with Apple CEO Tim Cook, and once the chip-and-PIN transition is completed, Target will be "open-minded" about supporting additional payment systems like Apple Pay. Target already supports Apple Pay in its iOS app.

Article Link: Target Plans to Offer Apple Pay After Chip-and-PIN Card Upgrade
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2015/05/27/target-apple-pay-coming-eventually/
Oh gee, I don't work there any longer but I thought they were supposed to have turned chip and pin on early this year. Thankfully i don't have to explain that to guests any longer.

And, while I would have been excited about Apple Pay - i'm rarely there. The cold shoulder I get because i left in November for physical reasons makes it not so fun to shop.
 
My local Target has NFC readers that they've switched off, so saying they'd love to do it right now is ********.
 
Pathetic because Apple Pay is already more secure than Chip and Pin. And faster.
And easier to implement. Sure, get Chip and Pin working. Sounds great. However I don't really want to enter a pin. And assuming it is a four digit number which the dude behind me will know looking over my shoulder, I'm not sure it is secure. Though I don't really know what the Chip part of the process really does. But I don't see how it can be more secure than one-time use tokenization.
 
So how long until they actually turn the chip slots on? They recently removed the covers from them at my local Target.
 
Finally!

My wife and I have refused to shop at Target since their breach. In the one exception, we paid cash.

After a breach that massive, where so many systems were compromised, I don't have much confidence that they were able to completely sanitize their credit card processing infrastructure.

It's too likely that something is still lurking in a dark corner of their network. I'm not using a credit card at Target unless it is something I can invalidate with little or no hassle.
 
FWIW, it's not actually chip-and-PIN, it's just chip. The banks (unfortunately) get to decide if their cards will use PIN or signature with the chip, and most in the US have opted to keep us in the dark ages with signature.
 
ptb42 said:
My wife and I have refused to shop at Target since their breach. In the one exception, we paid cash.

After a breach that massive, where so many systems were compromised, I don't have much confidence that they were able to completely sanitize their credit card processing infrastructure.

It's too likely that something is still lurking in a dark corner of their network. I'm not using a credit card at Target unless it is something I can invalidate with little or no hassle.
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They're using end-to-end encryption now from my understanding, and EMV will further help the situation.

Supporting contactless is far from a major undertaking. It's already in their new readers. It's a simple software push to turn it on.
 
flur said:
FWIW, it's not actually chip-and-PIN, it's just chip. The banks (unfortunately) get to decide if their cards will use PIN or signature with the chip, and most in the US have opted to keep us in the dark ages with signature.
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More like almost all of them. Long-term, that won't matter too much. Unless Apple Pay and Google Wallet/Samsung Pay never get high amounts of use ("high" as in close to or the majority of transactions).

ptb42 said:
My wife and I have refused to shop at Target since their breach. In the one exception, we paid cash.

After a breach that massive, where so many systems were compromised, I don't have much confidence that they were able to completely sanitize their credit card processing infrastructure.

It's too likely that something is still lurking in a dark corner of their network. I'm not using a credit card at Target unless it is something I can invalidate with little or no hassle.
Click to expand...

I've never had problems getting cards cancelled. It does require calling them though and changing auto-pay settings, which sucks.
 
TallManNY said:
Pathetic because Apple Pay is already more secure than Chip and Pin. And faster.
And easier to implement. Sure, get Chip and Pin working. Sounds great. However I don't really want to enter a pin. And assuming it is a four digit number which the dude behind me will know looking over my shoulder, I'm not sure it is secure. Though I don't really know what the Chip part of the process really does. But I don't see how it can be more secure than one-time use tokenization.
Click to expand...

With two exceptions, everywhere I've used Apple Pay has required me to either enter my card's PIN (for my debit) or sign (for my credit). Apple Pay may be more secure, but the merchants haven't caught up.
 
I've personally upgraded Target retail locations in my area with the Chip-and-Pin several months ago. Unless they have thousands of stores across the United States yet to upgrade, I can't see why it should take much longer to accept :apple:Pay. If anything his comments surprised me that Target hasn't yet at least enabled NFC at all locations.

Target was very secure installing the new pin pads and return of the pads that were removed from the sites during the upgrades, requesting photos of boxed items etc, to be shipped back via their own in house delivery system. Typically other retailers have a technician remove or replace an old pin pad and have the tech take responsibility for returning the pin pad with a pre paid waybill label.
 
flur said:
With two exceptions, everywhere I've used Apple Pay has required me to either enter my card's PIN (for my debit) or sign (for my credit). Apple Pay may be more secure, but the merchants haven't caught up.
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I posted a thread about it here a while back--the business has to turn chip on in order to be able to recognize that Touch ID was used. I don't mind signing as much as having to give the clerk my DAN because their system thought I swiped a card.
 
ButteryScrollin said:
My local Target has NFC readers that they've switched off, so saying they'd love to do it right now is ********.
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McDonald's in NZ had disabled NFC readers for about three years before finally enabling it about a year ago. Seems to be par for the course for some reason.
 
tmiw said:
I posted a thread about it here a while back--the business has to turn chip on in order to be able to recognize that Touch ID was used. I don't mind signing as much as having to give the clerk my DAN because their system thought I swiped a card.
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So the extra step will go away this fall? That's great.
 
ptb42 said:
My wife and I have refused to shop at Target since their breach. In the one exception, we paid cash.

After a breach that massive, where so many systems were compromised, I don't have much confidence that they were able to completely sanitize their credit card processing infrastructure.

It's too likely that something is still lurking in a dark corner of their network. I'm not using a credit card at Target unless it is something I can invalidate with little or no hassle.
Click to expand...

The amount of places that have had breaches is crazy and bet would pretty much make no place that you would be able to shop with card.

I am happy that security like ApplePay is coming around to help with that. Chip and pin is also a better step forward.

Tough to avoid a place because it had a breach at one time or another. A breach could be happening at this very moment at your favorite store and you nor they may not even know it.
 
not good enough, Mr. CEO.

why work on implementing chip-and-pin, which few people have yet, when you could implement tokenized NFC which millions and millions have and want to use, AND is better than chip-and-pin to begin with?
 
TallManNY said:
Pathetic because Apple Pay is already more secure than Chip and Pin. And faster.
And easier to implement. Sure, get Chip and Pin working. Sounds great. However I don't really want to enter a pin. And assuming it is a four digit number which the dude behind me will know looking over my shoulder, I'm not sure it is secure. Though I don't really know what the Chip part of the process really does. But I don't see how it can be more secure than one-time use tokenization.
Click to expand...
Do you even understand what you're comparing? Chip & PIN is not an Apple Pay competitor, it's just the more secure successor to the very old magnetic stripe card system. Until 90% or more of the population has access to Apple Pay (never happening), traditional credit cards aren't going anywhere. Target is simply going to offer Apple Pay when they upgrade their credit card terminals to Chip & PIN compatible ones, that will also feature NFC.
 
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