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Through the credit card authorization process, which is what happens when you swipe a card at the terminal. If Apple Pay can use that system then I concede the point. Yet I see when looking for answers on this specific point that some say it can and some say not.


ApplePay requires data to initially set up the card but doesn't to pay.

I am guessing anyone who says it's not working without data turned their phone to flight mode to test it - and I would also assume flight mode would disable the NFC chip. But if flight mode is off and you just don't have data, there is no reason ApplePay shouldn't work.
 
I've never had to provide DL+SSN for EFT setup. Every time I've set EFT up somewhere like Paypal, they make a couple test deposits and you have to enter the amount.

Which is a pain too, and not necessarily more private. FWIW, I don't know that they can insist on customers providing their SSN, at least not more than the last four digits. You cell provider will ask you for that to ID yourself when you call, and I don't hear any objections to that.
 
It's a Walmart thing. See the head of MCX the company fronting CurrentC is a Walmart executive. Whole thing set up by Walmart because top honcho hate paying Visa and MC the 2-3%. No need to worry about the MCX execs they will land ok back at Wallyland.

I'm taking a lot of pleasure in imagining his email and voicemail inbox this morning.
 
So...in short:

Apple Pay:
1. Hold phone to reader
2. Scan fingerprint

CurrentC:
1. Unlock phone
2. Find CurrentC app
3. Launch CurrentC app
4. Hope you have adequate signal in concrete walls of the store
5. Hold phone up to scanner

Also CurrentC is essentially a debit transaction. So no rewards, reduced fraud protection and increased likelihood of getting actual cash stolen from your bank account (Compared to a credit card being stored locally with Apple Pay.)

Also, and we've this happen with ApplePay (although it was not Apple's fault), what if you accidentally get double billed? Unlike a credit card where the credit card company can easily take away the extra charge, here you actually have lost your money as it is debited from your account. With personal experience it's harder to get back money you've lost on a debit due to an error than it is with a credit.
 
Putting aside all the security and cloud and info issues, just the fact that this makes people try to read a QR code with their phone makes it pretty impractical and will not catch on. Have you ever tried going in a store and reading a QR or regular bar code with a bar code reader app? It usually takes a while to get the camera in just the right spot, and just the right distance from the code to be captured. It's not an instantaneous thing, and you have to have a little dexterity to do it. This wouldn't be practical to make the general public do this constantly to make payments.

Can you imagine a little old lady with shaky hands trying to get her phone to read a bar code at the register? Not really going to happen.
 
Obviously CurrentC is somewhat more complicated to use than Apple Pay, but spin does not help us understand the differences and how they will be marketed:

-Apple will promote Apple Pay as simpler to use, and more secure.

-The other merchants will promote CurrentC as working with any smartphone, and providing customers with loyalty bonuses.

You don't need cell reception for Apple Pay to work. And unlike CurrentC, you don't have to line anything up or wait for the camera to focus. Just bring your phone near the POS
 
This is all about the big merchants hoping to protect their customer loyalty programs and bypassing the credit card companies. Not much point in telling the story any other way.

^This.

And, for right now, Target has a good program going to do this. If you use there store CC you get 5% off everything and they bypass the CC companies. Cheaper for you and cheaper for them.
 
Up here in Canada, you don’t have to give your Social Sec # to anyone but banks (and only if your going to earn interest) and any government institutions where money/benefits may be involved.

Anyone else can ask for it but you don’t have to give it to them. This goes for credit card applications, cashing cheques, etc.

Do americans readily hand over their Social Sec # to anyone asking for it?

You can certainly refuse to give SSN to anyone that requests it, but as the only national ID, it's become the de facto standard for use in credit checks and criminal history (background checks). If you decide not to provide it, you are often met with several other required identification items. It's really just how much you want to give up, quantitatively.
 
For the first time in a long time....

I see very little trolling and one common sentiment in a forum... nice :)

CurrentC has to be the dumbest idea to hit recent tech. In a world where most people are getting more and more reserved (and educated) about sharing personal information - here comes a retailer that wants people to willingly give up the most sensitive information to use an inconvenient purchase experience in the hopes of what? That the users might occasionally get a 0.50 in-app coupon?

Seems they're pushing this with integration with rewards programs and "additional savings" (e-coupons?) - The reality is - we all know that all rewards programs and e-coupons are is a way to bilk "non-members" out of additional money and get customers to share their purchasing habits (and even worse with currentc, personal data) in order to receive the same prices they did pre-rewards/loyalty program....

Complete, unadulterated, full-circle sham is what this is.
 
I believe you're wrong as well. Everything I have read says that Apple Pay will work without a data signal (I might just go and test this). However, trying to compare me tapping my phone to a NFC reader to scanning a QR code and then holding my phone up to have another QR code scanned by the clerk as comparable is laughable at best. So who's really trying to exaggerate here?

Apple Pay shouldn't require a network connection per Apple's knowledgebase article on the security/privacy, since the card ID and dynamic card verification value are stored in the secure element chip on the device, not in the cloud.

For these companies, a measly 2% is a LOT of money. However as another poster said, they're already passing these fees onto the customer (even if you pay cash), it's really about gaining another 2% in profit!

This is like the Durbin ammendment on credit cards (effective 2010, for banks with over $10B in assets the maximum they could take per debit swipe was 21 cents plus 0.05% (as in, one twentieth of a percent) of a transaction. With 1/3 of transactions being conducted on debit (sourced from consumer reports), this should have padded retailers bottom line nicely. Of course, we all remember the price drops at retailers after this happened, right ;) /s

Using ACH is a good idea... but this implementation is terrible. ACH fees tend to be anywhere from a few pennies to 50 cents, depending on volume and how much their bank wants them as their client. It's much less than a card scan, either way...

ACH transactions fall under the Electronic Funds Transfer Act, which limits consumer liability for fraudulent charges to $50 only if noticed within 48 hours, $500 if more than 48 hours but under 60 days, and unlimited liability for consumers after 60 days. Your money is also tied up during any dispute, with far weaker consumer protections.

ACH transfers have their place, but for buying a pack of gum it's ridiculous and a net negative for the consumer.

... that's exactly what it does. It is just like a plastic card with a PayPass or PayWave chip. No contact, terminal takes the identifying information, sends it along to the terminal owner to validate if the number is accurate, who sends it to the bank it was drawn on to verify funds, who sends it backwards towards the terminal with approvals.

This is correct, in a sense. Authorization is similar to a card swipe, albeit with more security.

  1. Devices notice each other (phone, payment terminal)
  2. The terminal notices the account number. The first 6 digits tell it information about the bank that issued it.
  3. The terminal contacts the bank and asks for a challenge. The bank comes up with a one time challenge, and knows the secret in the card. It's a predictable mathematical transformation if you know the secret, if it's a really provisioned card.
  4. The terminal tells your mobile device the secret. It puts it in the secure element, which uses the stored secret to produce a response to the challenge.
  5. The terminal sends the challenge to the bank. If it's a real, properly provisioned, active virtual card (not reported as lost, etc.), and the challenge matches the expectation, the bank approves the charge.

Auth on NFC payments doesn't include the CVV1 (a secret on the magstripe) or the CVV2 (the 3 digits on the back of most cards or 4 on front with Amex), nor the expiration date, cardholder name, etc. - it only contains enough information to complete a wireless payment. Since the challenge changes each time, someone can't use equipment to listen to your iPhone pay for something once via NFC and then repeat it - the challenge is already used, and is time sensitive/sensitive to the terminal that issued it as well.

Up here in Canada, you don’t have to give your Social Sec # to anyone but banks (and only if your going to earn interest) and any government institutions where money/benefits may be involved.

Anyone else can ask for it but you don’t have to give it to them. This goes for credit card applications, cashing cheques, etc.

Do americans readily hand over their Social Sec # to anyone asking for it?

Americans traditionally don't, but when you have middlemen handling financial transactions (e.g. a mobile wallet like CurrentC), you have to do so to comply with anti money laundering provisions of the PATRIOT Act.
 
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As posted by macduke on another thread:

Late 2014: Rite-Aid and CVS stopped accepting Apple Pay
Late 2015: Use our corny sounding "CurrentC" system! Don't worry about it collecting your private info!
2016: Rite-Aid and CVS retail sales slipping behind competitors Walgreens and others that accept multiple payment systems because they actually want customers to buy things.
Early 2017: Data leak at Rite-Aid leaves customers information vulnerable, customers of CVS worried about their data as well
Mid-2017: CVS switches support for Apple Pay back on
Late 2017: After leaks and slumping sales, the CEO of Rite-Aid steps down, acknowledges removing support for Apple Pay was clearly the wrong choice and takes full responsibility. The damage has been done and Rite-Aid files for bankruptcy, closing more than half of their stores as they reorganize in key markets.
 
Apple can remove an app if it is confusingly similar to an existing Apple Product (which I believe CurrentC is to Apple Pay).

I don't think Apple would need to reject the MCX app from the App Store to help the whole platform die out. I think it's already well on its way to extinction--before it even starts.
 
Ridiculous. Has all the hallmarks of being designed by committee and made worse by engineers.

Say what you will about Apple but I've always admired how they set the goal of creating the best experience and then working toward goal that every step of the way without compromising.
 
^This.

And, for right now, Target has a good program going to do this. If you use there store CC you get 5% off everything and they bypass the CC companies. Cheaper for you and cheaper for them.

They save 2-3% in magswipes and in return get to data mine your every purchase. They pay more in the discount then they'd pay for the swipes. Using greater information from payment methods that let them more easily identify more information about individual consumers is one way in which retailers like Target find out you're pregnant before you even know it yourself.

You save money on the paper discount, but your privacy is up in smoke.
 
^This.

And, for right now, Target has a good program going to do this. If you use there store CC you get 5% off everything and they bypass the CC companies. Cheaper for you and cheaper for them.

Target is the last company on this planet I'd trust with my personal info. They can take their branded CC and 5% discount and shove it. My identity is worth more than 5%.

I'll use my other credit cards there, because the worst thing that can happen is I have to get a new card number. But I will never in a million years trust them with my SSN and other sensitive information.
 
Really? So how does it know that your credit card isn't over limit? Apple Pay is trick, but it isn't magic.

Now go back and read what I actually wrote. I'll respond to what I actually said, not something you totally made up, thank you.

All Apple Pay does is transmits credit card information, tokenized, from your phone to the credit card terminal. It works like a normal credit card - if you are over the limited, the credit card terminal will inform the merchant and your Apple Pay will be declined.

This doesn't require a data connection, or even a cellular signal, on your iPhone.
 
^This.

And, for right now, Target has a good program going to do this. If you use there store CC you get 5% off everything and they bypass the CC companies. Cheaper for you and cheaper for them.

What you describe is not a "CC" which is an abbreviation for Credit Card.
 
What makes them think that Apple and Google will put this app into their app stores. I'm sure there's some loop hole that Apple and Google could come up with to reject it.
 
The biggest issue, many consumers need that charge to show up instantly on their acct. Very few consumers balance their checkbooks and will quickly be in an overdraft scenario. Also with the delayed posting/authorization on charges, who accepts liability. This service seems so antiquated. Real time is the name of the game. This offline posting won't work.

Actually, I got to be very good at timing when a check would hit my checking account and making sure that the funds would be there. So, I guess it is back to the good old times of floating charges.....
 
But at least those retailers will be saving money on a crappy and less reliable NFC tech partnership!

We the consumer lose again! What a joke. :(
 
ACH transfers have their place, but for buying a pack of gum it's ridiculous and a net negative for the consumer.

My packs of gum will be purchased with an AmEx, in my example. Swiping the MagStrip, further, to ensure the highest transaction fee for the merchants that disable NFC. And this isn't about using my phone to make those payments. It's about my cards too. For all the reasons you stated... and it sounds like you work in a corporate card environment, or a treasury/cash management role as well.
 
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