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Comment by ckastner | Hacker News Reader

> get a digital card that they can use anywhere Apple Pay

Apply Pay users: how broad is Apply Pay adoption? Is this a viable replacement for a VISA, Mastercard or AMEX?

I'm intrigued by the privacy angle to this, seeing as VISA and Mastercard apparently share and/or sell a lot of transaction data with/to third parties.

Edit: The article has been updated: As rumored, Apple is partnering with Goldman Sachs for Apple Card, with Mastercard handling payment processing. The mastercard network, plus the benefits Apples is offering (eg 2pct cashback), could make this really attractive.

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I use Apple pay wherever possible. It is far quicker and more convenient than either cash, chip card or swipe in that order.

Besides convenience, security and privacy are the backstop for my usage. I just trust Apple more to not be sleezy with my transaction history.

With the new Apple Card, somewhere in the presentation Apple had "Goldman Sachs will never sell your data to third parties" but what about the MasterCard backend? Surely, they'll see exact transactions and store information?

They explained this in the keynote. They are generating a per-transaction card number, so there is no reasonable way for Mastercard to track what a certain person is buying.

Thanks for the insight. So, now the question is whether GoldmanSachs can be trusted. Honestly, Apple is the only large company in existence that I can fully trust with my privacy. Given that this whole thing has been orchestrated by Apple, it wouldn't be too surprising for Apple to put preventative measures around GoldmanSachs based on their sleezy history.

What they described was card tokenization via the existing EMV standard for contactless payments.

  * Tokenization is using a unique per-device credit card.  These are generated by the payment network, so Mastercard knows who is making the payment.
  * EMV includes per-transaction tokens.

At no point did Apple say anything the prevents MasterCard from tracking your purchases. MasterCard shares this data with the credit networks, and the credit networks sell this data to third parties.

yes, goldman sachs and mastercard will most certainly data mine the information to correlate transactions to each other and to certain people. it won't be perfect, but it's not truly anonymous either.

doesn't say GS won't mine the data themselves for marketing.

Re: Privacy: Cash is the most privacy friendly payment method. Followed by virtual credit cards, which aren't really that private but an improvement over the usual.

Here with Apple Card, even if Apple might not choose to centralise your payment data, the underlying network (MasterCard, in this case) most certainly can know where you spent it, and vendors at point of sale can keep track of it too.

They know that SOMEONE spent money at a location, they won't know who it was.

AML laws are a thing. Someone in the chain definitely knows who it was. The payment network for sure, as well as any associated banks, and Apple, clearly. The merchant can see whatever their payment processor chooses to share with them.

I'm not as much of a fan of it with faceID as I was with touchID. Double tapping the lock button is awkward.

Compared to touching the Touch ID sensor?

yes, the touch ID sensor was near my fingers, the lock button is far from my fingers.

Opposite for me. FaceID makes the activation so much quicker.

Face ID for me is a godsend. For some reason, fingerprint sensors on Apple, Samsung, and OnePlus devices just don't work for me.

Hooray for FaceID!!!

> Double tapping the lock button is awkward.

I agree with this. Maybe it's because I still have trauma from broken power buttons (back in the iPhone 4 era), but I'd like to not have to press buttons as much as possible.

> I just trust Apple more to not be sleezy with my transaction history.

For now. They are all still collecting and storing all the data. The only solution is lack of data collection to begin with.

How are you supposed to see if there have been fraudulent charges if no one is collecting a list of previous charges?

cash > applepay > tap > swipe > chip > debit

cash is the most convenient secure and private form of payment. applepay if i run out of cash or its a larger transaction. chip (in the US) is hobbled by stupid UX (insert card, tap random buttons, sign, etc.), so swipe is usually quicker and more reliable. i never use debit.

Me too. But isn’t it annoying when gas pumps still ask you to enter your zip code?

In Canada I pay for pretty much everything with Apple Pay. It is accepted wherever there is tap available. There is only one coffee shop out of 100+ stores in my town that I can think of that doesn't support Apple Pay

https://www.apple.com/apple-pay/where-to-use/

Overall I try and use Apple Pay where I can and find about 2/3 of the time I want to use it I can. My biggest struggles have essentially been at smaller stores that still just have basic square swipers and obviously the occasional cash only locations.

I live and work in downtown Minneapolis and it’s becoming rare not to see Apple Pay. I use it whenever possible. It’s convenient and fast.

> how broad is Apply Pay adoption? Is this a viable replacement for a VISA, Mastercard or AMEX?

It should work anywhere that touchless mastercard is accepted, though I do think that vendors can turn off apple pay specifically to avoid the fee.

Not just touchless, since there’s a physical card as well.

> It should work anywhere that touchless mastercard is accepted, though I do think that vendors can turn off apple pay specifically to avoid the fee.

I don't think merchants have to pay anything extra to accept Apple Pay. It's the banks that have to pay a "marketing fee" to Apple to let their cards work with Apple Pay.

NFC payments are virtually on par with chip card payments in Switzerland, and it seems better every day in the US. I wouldn't say it's a replacement, particularly if you travel to one of many other countries, but Samsung Pay is very universal in my daily life.

I don't use it, but I just read (can't remember where) that adoption in America is about 70% of stores and 99% in Australia. This corresponds to another comment's assessment that it was available in about 2/3 of stores.

Yup, they had a slide with those exact numbers on it.

iirc, they had RU at around 85% and AUS at 99%

In Chicago, a lot of chain stores allow for Apple Pay, such as Aldis and Dunkin Donuts. But it’s hit or miss for independent shops. Some nice coffee shops and restaurants have tablets, but these often aren’t equipped to take Apple Pay.

Well in France nearly every shopping place accepts contactless payments. So I can basicly use it everywhere here. It’s fast and reliable. I like it.

I use it everyday (never have my physical cards with me anymore). Everywhere you can pay with contactless credit cards, you can pay with Apple Pay.

There's a physical card you can use as well.

~~But not online. Online is ApplePay only.~~

Edit: Apparently not.

No true. You can use your standard card numbers online without Apple Pay. You get the numbers from within the wallet app.

I'm not going to get an Apple credit card heh. But where did you see this info? They said the number & ccv would be available via the apple wallet app for use online (although you only get 1% back).

There’s an actual card number and CVV code associated with the card.

Yes, but how do you access them?

Using Wallet on your iPhone.

Sure you can, you just have to pull the info from your wallet app.

This is why it's an 80% solution. Most of my online purchases are at specific places (Amazon, other sites using Paypal, directly through airlines, etc).

However, if Apple can isolate most Apple purchases to using their own card, things get interesting. 3% off Apple purchases is pretty decent. Kind of like Amazon wants all it's data for purchases through it's own card.

Apple Pay is available and used for about 50% of my daily transactions here in the Washington DC/Mid-Atlantic region.

Surprisingly the service is widely avaialible in my country (Brazil). Almost every credit card reader down here has NFC

100% in russia

They had a slide showing something like 95%.

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