Apple Pay Roundup: Everything We Know, Coming in October

[yg17]

yep, that's great news and all but wake me up when this becomes available in Canada. might give me a reason to upgrade from my 5S. and it's really pretty ironic that the roll-out of Apple Pay starts in USA which has the least level of NFC adoption among developed countries. Canada, UK, Australia, Japan, Korea all have quite high NFC adoption levels by merchants already. So it would have been much easier for Apple to gain acceptance for Apple pay in any of these markets than in US. but of course that's not going to happen...

The US lacks a secure payment system. EMV has a low level of acceptance here (just used my chipped card at a place today that has PIN pads with disabled EMV readers, becoming a common occurrence ) so the way I see it, this might be the push the US needs to get off the antiquated, insecure magstripe.

In other countries, if you don't have an NFC, you at least have EMV. In the US, if you don't have NFC, you have magstripe. There's a reason why all these data breaches are happening at American retailers.

 

[rsocal]

Any NFC payment terminal will take Apple Pay.

Normally, the terminal identifies your debit card or credit card.

With Apple Pay, your iPhone creates a virtual credit card. The NFC terminal doesn't realise it's not a real card. It send the data about the credit card for example to Visa, Visa has worked with Apple and figures out that this is an Apple Pay virtual credit card and accepts it, so the NFC terminal accepts your card.

The NFC terminal has no idea what was going on. It only knows that it was given details of a card (it doesn't know it was a virtual card) and that Visa accepted the card.

The nice thing is that this virtual credit card will be used only _once_ for that one payment. So if you have a company losing 56 million credit card numbers to hackers, the hackers don't have your card number. They have a virtual card number that was accepted for that one payment, and won't be accepted for any other payment ever again.



With Apple Pay, _nobody_ will ever see your credit card number. That includes Apple. Your credit card number cannot be stolen because nobody ever has it. That's different with Google Wallet. And Apple Pay requires a secure chip in the iPhone that does all the work, and that chip is not hackable.

I like the one time C.C. number with a fingerprint.

 

[flaw600]

No chance. Payments need to be 100% secure. They need to be secure even if you jailbreak your phone, install malware on it, anything. That's achieved by having a special chip in the iPhone 6 that does all the work and that cannot be hacked from the outside. The iPhone 5s doesn't have that chip, so it cannot use Apple Pay.



iWatch has NFC, but it doesn't have the chip that does the encryption. It needs an iPhone 6.

Second part is untrue. According to Apple's ApplePay page, AppleWatch's ApplePay function will work with iPhone 5, 5c, and 5S, which leads to the conclusion that the AppleWatch will have the Secure Element as well

 

[yg17]

They don't collect the money from the retailer. Instead, part of the money that the retailer pays to banks is now given to Apple. So really it's the banks that are paying Apple from the fees that the banks collect from retailers.

Apple Pay is built on top of the contactless EMV standard making it fully compatible with all existing contactless terminals. But with the help of the payment networks and their partner banks, they've created a system that's even more secure than any previous contactless payment system, including Google Wallet and ISIS (now called SoftCard).

Makes sense. So the list of retailers Apple mentioned in the keynote don't have a special deal with Apple (well, maybe for the advertising on apple.com), they're just retailers who have committed to, or already accept, NFC.

 

[technima]

I have a Discover Card associated with my iTunes account which as far as I can tell isn't one of the participating Apple Pay Credit Card vendors. I want to add a Wells Fargo Visa for NFC purchases but I do not see any option in iTunes to add a card to my account. I do not want to swap out the Discover Card for the Visa. Will there be another way to add the card to Apple Passbook?

You don't have to swap anything out. Once Apple Pay rolls out you will be able to use multiple cards with Apple Pay.

 

[gnasher729]

Considering how they are touting their hardware security measures, don't expect them to allow non-iPhones to use Apple Pay.

That would actually be impossible. Apple Pay needs a chip that is only present in the iPhone 6. Apple Pay doesn't even work on an iPhone 5s. In theory, Apple could build these chips and sell them to other companies but there is little chance that this would happen.

Other phone companies can build similar chips, make an agreement with Visa etc. who will check these chips very, very carefully, and build their own payment system. For the merchants it doesn't make any difference.

 

[Peepo]

Come on Apple, if you can get the grocery store chains and gas stations on board with this, it will become the standard! I have this fear that Walmart will win with their standard, sigh.

Nope, Walmart is only about Walmart whereas Apple wants its payment method everywhere.

Honestly, it doesn't really matter what Walmart does anyways since they are so slow in ALL other aspects of the lineup besides the actual payment.

It would be relatively cheap for Walmart to switch over to Apple Pay since they don't need to upgrade all their hardware - they seem to only use one checkout per store while the others collect dust and decay!

 

[V.K.]

Any NFC payment terminal will take Apple Pay.

Normally, the terminal identifies your debit card or credit card.

With Apple Pay, your iPhone creates a virtual credit card. The NFC terminal doesn't realise it's not a real card. It send the data about the credit card for example to Visa, Visa has worked with Apple and figures out that this is an Apple Pay virtual credit card and accepts it, so the NFC terminal accepts your card.

The NFC terminal has no idea what was going on. It only knows that it was given details of a card (it doesn't know it was a virtual card) and that Visa accepted the card.

The nice thing is that this virtual credit card will be used only _once_ for that one payment. So if you have a company losing 56 million credit card numbers to hackers, the hackers don't have your card number. They have a virtual card number that was accepted for that one payment, and won't be accepted for any other payment ever again.



With Apple Pay, _nobody_ will ever see your credit card number. That includes Apple. Your credit card number cannot be stolen because nobody ever has it. That's different with Google Wallet. And Apple Pay requires a secure chip in the iPhone that does all the work, and that chip is not hackable.

I am hoping that NFC terminals can be configured to realize that you are paying with a phone and not with a card. if not the already deployed terminals then at least some new ones. One of the most annoying limitations of NFC credit cards are transaction caps (usually 50$ in Canada). they make sense for cards because there is absolutely no authentication involved. but this should not be needed with an iphone using touch id for authentication.

 

[Peepo]

That would actually be impossible. Apple Pay needs a chip that is only present in the iPhone 6. Apple Pay doesn't even work on an iPhone 5s. In theory, Apple could build these chips and sell them to other companies but there is little chance that this would happen.

Other phone companies can build similar chips, make an agreement with Visa etc. who will check these chips very, very carefully, and build their own payment system. For the merchants it doesn't make any difference.

Exactly, currently just like how some people prefer Visa while others prefer Mastercard and Amex etc.

 

[V.K.]

The US lacks a secure payment system. EMV has a low level of acceptance here (just used my chipped card at a place today that has PIN pads with disabled EMV readers, becoming a common occurrence ) so the way I see it, this might be the push the US needs to get off the antiquated, insecure magstripe.

In other countries, if you don't have an NFC, you at least have EMV. In the US, if you don't have NFC, you have magstripe. There's a reason why all these data breaches are happening at American retailers.

yes, I knew that. and since Visa and Mastercard are switching to EMV in US in 2015 anyway Apple is doing this at the right time. But still, my point was that the biggest hurdle with a system like this is to get the merchants on board. In US Apple will have to push them to do so. In Canada or Australia they don't really need to push anybody as NFC readers are everywhere already.

 

[Fenez]

NFC will catch on eventually as soon as the merchants install the hardware, its a really nice feature. Not carrying a wallet unfortunately is years away. Nfc is the future.

 

[Euge]

The only provost with Apple Pay is that only iPhone user will be able to use it. So it can't become the standard. There may be 10 million iPhone 6/6+ in the wild now but they're are millions more android users and they're always will be. If Apple wants this to really catch on they need to find a way for it to work on Android phones.

There may be millions more devices running Android, but not all support Google Wallet. You need:

1. a supported version of Android (> 2.3)
2. an NFC enabled device
3. to be using a carrier that supports Google Wallet

Google won't say how many Google wallet users there are. Maybe 20 million. [source] Even if the number of Google Wallet users is higher, it doesn't add as much incentive to the banks, merchants, or consumers as Apple Pay. You don't need numbers to support standards, you need adoption.

 

[technima]

I am hoping that NFC terminals can be configured to realize that you are paying with a phone and not with a card. if not the already deployed terminals then at least some new ones. One of the most annoying limitations of NFC credit cards are transaction caps (usually 50$ in Canada). they make sense for cards because there is absolutely no authentication involved. but this should not be needed with an iphone using touch id for authentication.

That's not true. The usual $50 cap in Canada for contactless payments is imposed by the card itself, not the terminal. Once Apple Pay rolls out in Canada, contactless terminals won't need to be "configured" for anything.

 

[dontwalkhand]

That's not true. The usual $50 cap in Canada for contactless payments is imposed by the card itself, not the terminal. Once Apple Pay rolls out in Canada, contactless terminals won't need to be "configured" for anything.

I literally just tapped my card for a $264 car repair bill at Big O Tires. No obvious transaction limits with contextless in the U.S.

 

[rsocal]

Until your wallet gets lost or stolen and you have absolutely zero recourse to recover any cash in your wallet.

This is true, but I have yet to lose a wallet in my 35yrs of carrying one and when large amounts are in my wallet, it's not going to get lost!

Cash business was just a fun way to get better deals on a lot of things. I still offer cash discounts with my business.

I'm all for Apple Pay and better security. I was really just reminiscing about when cash was king.....

 

[576316]

Really hoping Apple don't take too long to push this out to those of us in the UK and other European countries. We STILL don't have iTunes Radio which is ridiculous. One would think Apple should create agreements with lots of countries before even announcing a product instead of rushing something out, making it only available in one country.

 

[rsocal]

Have you see the new $100 bills

Oh ya.....

 

[576316]

This is true, but I have yet to lose a wallet in my 35yrs of carrying one and when large amounts are in my wallet, it's not going to get lost!

Cash business was just a fun way to get better deals on a lot of things. I still offer cash discounts with my business.

I'm all for Apple Pay and better security. I was really just reminiscing about when cash was king.....

I think it's important for us to move away from cash payments now. As Apple did say, cash is such an ancient form of currency and the market in most countries is filled with fake tender and lost coins. Digitising payment completely not only makes it faster but it also makes it more secure and that's always a good thing. Digitising payments also means that the correct amount is always received and lowers the chances of human error in counting money, giving change etc.

 

[dontwalkhand]

This is true, but I have yet to lose a wallet in my 35yrs of carrying one and when large amounts are in my wallet, it's not going to get lost!

Cash business was just a fun way to get better deals on a lot of things. I still offer cash discounts with my business.

I'm all for Apple Pay and better security. I was really just reminiscing about when cash was king.....

I'll gladly take cash, and I'll gladly pay others with my card. I do most of the time have cash on me, but use my card to pay. I do see the look on mom and pop store cashiers when they see the cash in my money clip, and I pull out my card to pay them.

(Hello rewards points ;-))

 

[Patriot24]

Apple needs to start sending buckets of Pay stickers to every retail store in America to plaster all over their check stands. People aren't going to look for the NFC logo and all that. They'll need to make it really obvious.

 

[576316]

Have you see the new $100 bills

I'm British and even I've seen that Microsoft Word 2007 inspired eye sore!

 

[576316]

Apple needs to start sending buckets of Pay stickers to every retail store in America to plaster all over their check stands. People aren't going to look for the NFC logo and all that. They'll need to make it really obvious.

Yes but then Google are gonna insist that they get to put Android stickers everywhere you can use Android phones to pay (I was told Google have a similar service) and then before you know it, cashiers are covered in stickers!

 

[tjl3]

The US lacks a secure payment system. EMV has a low level of acceptance here (just used my chipped card at a place today that has PIN pads with disabled EMV readers, becoming a common occurrence ) so the way I see it, this might be the push the US needs to get off the antiquated, insecure magstripe.

In other countries, if you don't have an NFC, you at least have EMV. In the US, if you don't have NFC, you have magstripe. There's a reason why all these data breaches are happening at American retailers.

Next year EVERY merchant will have to accept EMV and EVERY credit card issued in the US will be EMV. The merchants will carry the liability if they only accept swipe, and they will probably pay a higher card processing fee. So EMV will have a near 100% acceptance October 2015

I am hoping that NFC terminals can be configured to realize that you are paying with a phone and not with a card. if not the already deployed terminals then at least some new ones. One of the most annoying limitations of NFC credit cards are transaction caps (usually 50$ in Canada). they make sense for cards because there is absolutely no authentication involved. but this should not be needed with an iphone using touch id for authentication.

It has nothing to do with the NFC terminal, and everything to do with the card issuing banks. I doubt you see any transaction limit since Pay is technically more secure than EMV.

 

[waveboreale]

i am not even sure where i can actually use credit cards besides for online shopping over here Subway said nope, Mc Donalds said nope, Media Markt said nope, Gasstation said nope, cinema said 1€ extra, Grocery Store said nope

therefore nope never gonna happen here

talking about Germany ? I don't get why Germans are so attached to money !

In France, except for food market and bakery, I always use my debit/credit cards.

 

[technima]

I literally just tapped my card for a $264 car repair bill at Big O Tires. No obvious transaction limits with contextless in the U.S.

Yes, and this stems from the fact that in the US contactless cards are both authenticated and authorized online. In Canada, most contactless transactions are authenticated and authorized offline because it's faster and because it's only used for small purchases.