Apple Pay Expanding to China, Possibly France and Canada's Big Banks

[MrAverigeUser]

In your world (no eWallet), you have no diversification. Your physical cards are your only means of accessing your accounts, which makes them single-points-of-failure. If you lose your wallet (or an individual card), or something's stolen, "you will be lost". You have to report your cards stolen (or broken), which causes your issuers to cancel them, and you're dead in the water for the period of time that it takes all of your issuers to ship you replacement cards.

With an eWallet like Apple Pay, your digital cards are a second means of accessing your accounts. To me, that's diversification. So if your phone breaks or is lost/stolen, in the time it takes you to resolve that, you simply go back to using the physical cards that you had stored safely at home. Driving home and getting your physical card is inconvenient, but I wouldn't qualify that as "you will be lost" (as I would when a physical card breaks or is lost). Since the PAN of the digital cards are different from your physical cards, the digital cards can be cancelled without any effect to your physical cards. Once your phone situation is resolved, you can immediately reenroll your physical cards (and again store them away safely at home) and start using the digital ones. There is no wait for your card issuer to physically ship you anything, because they don't have to.

And FWIW, my OP to you was referring to Apple Wallet Passes, not Apple Pay. If my iPhone craps out and I'm unable to produce my Wegman's frequent shopper card, or AAA card if I need road side assistance, etc, etc, etc, there are easy ways to get around them without even having to drive home and get the redundant physical card. Having the Apple Wallet Pass just makes those processes faster.

First, As the apple wallet is nothing than a copy of your physical card I doubt that you can at the same time report your lost or stolen non-physical CC (=apple wallet) and at the same time still use them in a physical way (=physical CC). So the apple wallet cannot be a redundant security at all. Just the opposite: if you loose ot it gets stolen, younhave to block the whole iphone for security reasons.,

Second, if your wallet falls to the ground by accident you just take it back in your hands - but your iPhone might be broken.
This is far more often the case than wallets being stolen. Surely 100-1000 times mor often. So far for real-life risk.

Third,
Even a wallet falling will much less often be the case than a phone falling because you never will communicate with a wallet or surf with your wallet in the internet or hear music while jogging and so in...

 

[nicho]

First, As the apple wallet is nothing than a copy of your physical card I doubt that you can at the same time report your lost or stolen non-physical CC (=apple wallet) and at the same time still use them in a physical way (=physical CC). So the apple wallet cannot be a redundant security at all. Just the opposite: if you loose ot it gets stolen, younhave to block the whole iphone for security reasons.,

Second, if your wallet falls to the ground by accident you just take it back in your hands - but your iPhone might be broken.
This is far more often the case than wallets being stolen. Surely 100-1000 times mor often. So far for real-life risk.

Third,
Even a wallet falling will much less often be the case than a phone falling because you never will communicate with a wallet or surf with your wallet in the internet or hear music while jogging and so in...

I've broken three debit cards (irreparably) in the last 9 months by accidentally sitting on my wallet. Replacing any of them here is a pain in the arse, involving going to a bank branch on at least two occasions for probably about an hour in total. I've broken 0 iPhones in that time...

Also you can indeed do what you said he couldn't. Each device is given a unique number. If I report my phone lost or stolen (you actually don't have to do that, you just wipe/disable the cards via iCloud) those "tokens" as they are called (seemingly actual UnionPay cards, in the Chinese implementation) are cancelled but that's it. The actual card is not affected. That's the whole point of tokenisation. Your research is below average.

 

[aristobrat]

Here is what my American Express card looks like in Apple Wallet. Notice that the physical card number ends in '08' and the Device Account Number (which is the "card number" used when you use Apple Pay) ends in '72'.

The Apple Pay card is not a direct copy of the plastic card. It's a completely unique account number.

Now assume I just lost (or broke) my iPhone. I simply use a computer, login into my iCloud account (www.icloud.com) and cancel/remove/delete the virtual card (myself). Note that for this example, before I removed the virtual card, I have turned off my iPhone completely, like a good thief would, or if it were truly broken to the point that it was inoperable. I was still able to cancel/remove/delete the virtual card, even though the phone was inaccessible. It's immediately cancelled from American Expresses' end.

A few minutes later, I turned my phone back on. As soon as it connected to cellular, the virtual card (that was already cancelled from American Express servers) was also removed from the phone.

Also note that there has been no effect on my physical American Express card. It still works, even though I have cancelled/removed/deleted my virtual card.

Now note that when I go to add my American Express plastic card back to my iPhone, it again picks an unique device account number. for Apple Pay It's different that the physical card, and it's different that the previous virtual card (that I cancelled/deleted/removed) for these screenshots.

 

[MrAverigeUser]

I've broken three debit cards (irreparably) in the last 9 months by accidentally sitting on my wallet. Replacing any of them here is a pain in the arse, involving going to a bank branch on at least two occasions for probably about an hour in total. I've broken 0 iPhones in that time...

Also you can indeed do what you said he couldn't. Each device is given a unique number. If I report my phone lost or stolen (you actually don't have to do that, you just wipe/disable the cards via iCloud) those "tokens" as they are called (seemingly actual UnionPay cards, in the Chinese implementation) are cancelled but that's it. The actual card is not affected. That's the whole point of tokenisation. Your research is below average.

It's rather inexplicable for me that you broke already three cards...

I use Credit cards since several decades and I never faced even one single card broken nor any person I know.
Better think about your way to treat your cards instead of claiming their non-reliablility...

If you press your card in your wallet and the backside with the magnetic part mechanically gets abraded by a second card's frontside, this is not a design flaw of the card but your mishandling. Inrealized this problem as one day one card did not function everytime no more and regarding the backside made me learn to prevent abrasive treatment in the wallet. Same for magnetic influence.

As for I am more astonished how reststant the cards are for false treatment (including mine before) than being concerned about possible failure...

If your example would really be statistically representative and significant the banks had already changed their design as this was degrading their business and so their revenues (aside from millions and millions of customers not being able to serve themselves by CC)....the simple fact that they did not shows nothing else but that they are enormously reliable and sturdy in other hands than yours....

 

[nicho]

It's rather inexplicable for me that you broke already three cards...

I use Credit cards since several decades and I never faced even one single card broken nor any person I know.
Better think about your way to treat your cards instead of claiming their non-reliablility...

If you press your card in your wallet and the backside with the magnetic part mechanically gets abraded by a second card's frontside, this is not a design flaw of the card but your mishandling. Inrealized this problem as one day one card did not function everytime no more and regarding the backside made me learn to prevent abrasive treatment in the wallet. Same for magnetic influence.

As for I am more astonished how reststant the cards are for false treatment (including mine before) than being concerned about possible failure...

If your example would really be statistically representative and significant the banks had already changed their design as this was degrading their business and so their revenues (aside from millions and millions of customers not being able to serve themselves by CC)....the simple fact that they did not shows nothing else but that they are enormously reliable and sturdy in other hands than yours....

It may be my wallet to blame, to be fair, or the design spec of cards in China may be slightly below that of other countries - because every one of them has split in exactly the same place, below the magnetic strip...

That aside it was just a casual anecdote to show that for some users an ewallet is more convenient.

 

[SHNXX]

everyone has alipay. everyone has wechat. even if everyone in the country had an iphone, it'll need something more than "availability" to make waves.

the only killer feature i can think of would be what some american banks are planning; allow access at an atm through quickpass/touch id. i think a lot of atms are already NFC ready, so it may technically be feasible. getting cash with touch id would be handy. i think some of the banks may have a feature where you can use their app to set up a one time code to withdraw cash if you didn't have your card, but this would be an order of magnitude more convenient.

[edit: as a statistic, wechat is a payment option in over 100,000 stores, 80,000 restaurants and 600 parking lots, according to my newspaper that just arrived.]

Those are probably just the terminals right?
I mean since every shop keeper has wechat they could use that too.

I upgraded my airplane seat using wechat once.

Apple Pay isn't even going to see much traction at all, although I suppose it could help people use some debit/credit cards.

 

[nicho]

Those are probably just the terminals right?
I mean since every shop keeper has wechat they could use that too.

I upgraded my airplane seat using wechat once.

Apple Pay isn't even going to see much traction at all, although I suppose it could help people use some debit/credit cards.

I think you're right; they're probably the bigger businesses with the specific payment terminals and scanners rather than individual shopkeepers who'll also take it on their phones.

 

[nicho]

Apples big problem : nobody knows how to use quickpass (outside of the big businesses).

Basically every modern card payment terminal is equipped for it. Even mobile ones. And nobody knows how to program it (because you need to put the amount in first, whereas if you insert the card it begins prompting and is fairly straightforward)

Banks and payment processors need to go on a big knowledge offensive for Apple Pay to become useful, unfortunately.

This isn't a case of nobody having the equipment. It's not having the skills and knowledge and that's so frustrating.