Apple Pay: Can a merchant get your address?

[NovemberWhiskey]

This is a long complicated story, so I will try to clean it up for ease

I used Apple Pay at a merchant, and they ended up getting an address from me that I never gave them myself. They still have that address on file in their fraud department over a year later, but not in their main department.

Are merchants supposed to be able to access your shipping or billing addresses on your Apple Pay?

 

[Julien]

The only way (*other than from you) is if your finical institution/CC provider sent it to them. The merchant only receives an anonymous 'token' CC number with a security code (insuring it came from your iDevice). Even Apple can't determine your personal information from the transaction data. Here is a good article on how Pay works.

http://www.kirklennon.com/a/applepay.html

*The token is a static number so if anytime in the past had you filled out or enrolled in or used a rewards card at the same time as using Pay then you would have given them your info. The merchant could relate this data to the token number and deduce who it is.

 

[NovemberWhiskey]

The only way (*other than from you) is if your finical institution/CC provider sent it to them. The merchant only receives an anonymous 'token' CC number with a security code (insuring it came from your iDevice). Even Apple can't determine your personal information from the transaction data. Here is a good article on how Pay works.

http://www.kirklennon.com/a/applepay.html

*The token is a static number so if anytime in the past had you filled out or enrolled in or used a rewards card at the same time as using Pay then you would have given them your info. The merchant could relate this data to the token number and deduce who it is.

Thanks!

So even if I used a rewards card, that would mean they would have to go to my financial instituation and make an inquiry, and my financial instituation would have to release my personal info like that address right? It wouldn't just show up in their systems automatically?

 

[Julien]

Thanks!

So even if I used a rewards card, that would mean they would have to go to my financial instituation and make an inquiry, and my financial instituation would have to release my personal info like that address right? It wouldn't just show up in their systems automatically?

No, if you used a rewards card then you have already given them your personal info. You gave them your personal information when you signed up for the rewards card. The main purpose of a rewards card is to 'reward' the provider by giving them the ability to track you.

So Pay is irrelevant. The same thing would have happened had you paid in cash and used a rewards card.

 

[NovemberWhiskey]

No, if you used a rewards card then you have already given them your personal info. You gave them your personal information when you signed up for the rewards card. The main purpose of a rewards card is to 'reward' the provider by giving them the ability to track you.

So Pay is irrelevant. The same thing would have happened had you paid in cash and used a rewards card.

Ah, I see what you are saying. Thanks.

In my situation, the address they found was not the one I gave them for my rewards info. I never entered that address on their website, or gave it to them voluntarily. Basically they could have only gotten it by either snooping through my contact list on my phone (since I have their app installed) or because that address was once associated with my Apple Pay. It was accidentally listed as the billing address, or the shipping address (although I never asked for any products to be shipped to that address). So I was curious as to how they could get it.

If merchants are able to see the shipping/billing address when I make a purchase with them via Apple Pay, then the situation makes sense. But if not, as I had believed, then the whole thing is still really shady and that merchant has somehow illegally obtained that information.