lol. Way to make a girl feel special!! (...honestly never been called a troll before). hahaha. (but something tells me that you weren't referring to my looks, somehow, but I'll let that slide!). Just to clarify though, I am indeed English (both by birth, and every generation before me), so lived in the UK for the vast majority of my life, until I got married. But you're partly correct in the sense that I no longer live in the UK anymore. I was born in Worcestershire though (if you know where that is?), but now live permanently in Greece with my Husband who is Greek (hence the username). But as I am British, and can't apply for a local bank account over here so easily, all my banks and credit cards are still my UK ones, so I still take an interest in how they are developing, as it affects me directly. Am truly gutted that they don't have ApplePay out here though yet, so am curious to know how well the UK rollout for it is going so far since I've been away? Has it become mainstream yet, or are many companies still slow to adopt?
Anyways, in answer to your question, being British, I do know HSBC, and am delighted to hear from you that at least some banks are using it in the way that I've always thought was just common sense. (not all banks do though, yet). For example, I bank with Nationwide and Halifax, and while I do rate them both extremely well as banks, and they both have excellent iPhone apps, they still use their own form of authentication, so naturally me being a fan of TouchID, I'm hoping that someday the banks I use will incorporate it aswell. But thankyou for letting me know that the API does support the functionality in the way I perceived it (I might have to write to my banks, and let them know, because if what I suspect is true, and it just being things like them not thinking it's secure enough that is holding them back, then we might be able to give them the nudge they need to get with the 21st century, and just implement it already! And thankyou for letting me know that HSBC is already using it. If I tell them that, it might also help, as I'm sure they won't wanna get left behind! (and it certainly removes all the excuses).
Forgive me for going off on such a tangent though. In answer to your original question, you raised a very good point about the banks possibly not covering you in such a situation where somebody stole your wallet and spent some money via the contactless payment method. Fortunately this has never happened to me, but I wouldn't fancy my chances of being reimbursed in such an event, so you're probably right.
Anyways, do let me know how things are going with the ApplePay stuff. It's nice to keep in touch with people who still live in the UK, to see what's changed since I left. I bet it's a very different place now.
It's very mainstream here. Even my local small and ploey corner shop has contactless. A brand new polish supermarket opened up in an old Peacocks and has CL and AP.
I posted above about what one of my banks said to me when I got my wallet stolen lately. I am loving the fact I have an Iphone SE so 4 inch phone. Often even I forget it's in my inside coat pocket so chances of anyone else knowing I have it is slim to none.