Apple Pay on pace to account for 10% of global card transactions
qz.com
qz.com
in the US, it's faster than chip-and-pin cards by a LOT. It rolls a new number every time I use it, so i can pay at sketchy gas stations at 2 AM and not care about skimming. More and more gas stations are upgrading their pump POS pads so i can refuel my bike without digging under my armour for my wallet.
On websites, my only quibble is that it's often very hard or not possible to enter discount codes or other special checkout options like "pick up in store" when using the apple pay button(s); when I don't have any codes, I dearly appreciate not having to make an account for that merchant and i'm significantly more likely to spend money at websites that support it.
I don't know what happened to it. My guess is that since most gas stations are small businesses, they didn't want to pay to upgrade all of their pumps.
That's because those sales show up as being in the "online shopping" category for my credit card despite actually taking place in store, and I've got a card with very good cash back rewards for online shopping.
Are you positive about this?
When I used Apple Pay (in Germany) I always got the same card number. It was my understanding that the number is generated when you add a card to Wallet and is unique to your device, but not transaction.
EDIT: The Apple support site [1] claims the following:
> Full card numbers aren’t stored on the device or on Apple Pay servers. Instead, a unique Device Account Number is created, encrypted, and then stored in the Secure Element.
I believe this aligns with my understanding.
[1] https://support.apple.com/guide/security/credit-debit-prepai...
Visa and MasterCard didn’t have the advantage of a phone platform that make contactless payment actually more convenient than magstripe so the value in rolling it out was pretty low.
I believe tokenization is a feature that is ultimately coming, but not quite there yet (and can also be supported by normal cards).
Disclaimer: I take interest in the payment-world, but am by no means an expert and have made the above claims only to the best of my knowledge.
EDIT: It appears the process of generating the device specific card number is already tokenization.
> After the validation, the card network acting as a TSP (Token Service Provider) creates a token (which is called a DAN or a Device Account Number in the context of Apple Pay) and a token key. This DAN is generated using tokenization and is not the actual card number.
[1] suggests that while some cryptography is done for each transaction, the token is the card number and still only unique to the device, not the transaction.
Said cryptography should be according to the EMV standard [2] and is also performed by a normal card (potentially minus the tokenization).
[1] https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-apple-pay-works-under-...
I noticed this too. Some merchants print the last four of the device account number (DAN) and some print the last four of the actual primary account number (PAN).
I asked about it on /r/ApplePay [1]. /u/martialplum provided this explanation:
> Although the card number sent to the reader from in the transaction is the device account number, this gets de-tokenized along the way to your bank (either by the payment network or some third party) and the actual card number is the one used for authorization. Some issuers use the actual card number in the response they send back to the merchant (data element 2 in ISO 8583). Depending on how the card reader formats the receipt, it's not uncommon for merchant copies of the receipt to show the full device account number (expected), but show the last 4 of the actual card number for convenience when someone shows them the card on their device, which will show the same numbers.
The "ISO 8583" text in that was a link to this [2].
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ApplePay/comments/bnedl7/receipts_a...
What is generated per transaction is the EMV unpredictable number, but this is part of the EMV protocol and done for any EMV transaction. Think of this like the dynamically generated symmetric key for an SSL session.
What about when magstripe emulation is in use, does Apple Pay support that in the US?
Only Samsung Pay does magstripe emulation.
Which bit is confusing (or remotely deceptive)?
> When you make a purchase, Apple Pay uses a device-specific number and unique transaction code. So your card number is never stored on your device or on Apple servers, and when you pay, your card numbers are never shared by Apple with merchants.
Are you claiming this is untrue? Or deceptive?
Hopefully your bank has fraud controls on it to prevent it from being used outside of the way Apple Pay does (which requires your phone or a physical card so prevents theft) but that's not required and without it there is nothing stopping the card from being used like any other.
Nope. That's deliberately confusing Apple marketing. You get one PAN per device. The new "number" is just the EMV unpredictable number. You get that with any EMV card.
https://emvlab.org/emvtags/show/t9F37/
> and not care about skimming.
Because the PAN is only valid for online authorized EMV transactions.
They are using an industry standard protocol that is 25 years old.
Maybe because people know the word "token" and don't know what a "PAN" is. Apple has built a trillion-dollar company by speaking at the level of its customers, not technobabble.
I'm somewhat uninitiated, and I definitely got the wrong impression. So thanks for your clear-up.
However a seemingly trivial but important difference with Apple Pay is that it doesn't use your physical card number—instead it uses a different card number randomly assigned to your device. The payment networks can therefore recognise Apple Pay-assigned numbers and know to demand full Apple Pay authentication when they are used.
This reduces the scope for downgrade attacks.
I do wonder if the security gain is significant enough to make Apple Pay integration a gross-positive for all parties. Apple appears to charge a ~0.1-0.2% fee per transaction made via Apple Pay [0], so it might be reasonable that the security adds enough value in its own right to make sense from a fraud/insurance perspective.
Might also be the fact that possibly being "Top of wallet" on Apple Pay (Which users might use anyway, irrespective of if their normal card is supported) provides enough value to take a small hit in fees.
[0] https://appleinsider.com/articles/16/02/22/apple-halved-tran...
But to be fair, after trying to do payments in various other ways, Google eventually built their Android payments platform to be an almost perfect 1:1 recreation of Apple Pay.
(And this is a recurring theme with Android. I'm not saying Google aren't within their rights to build things however they wish, but it is remarkable how often Google make loud smug noises about how they've done things differently to Apple—only for those points of differentiation to quietly disappear a few years later. Say what you will about Apple, a company that makes plenty of horrible mistakes, but it's remarkable how often they do get things exactly right the first time.)
There are varying reports of people seeing unfamiliar (i.e. device) numbers and their card number on receipts. I've no knowledge about exactly why there's no consistency, but my suspicion is that Apple Pay sends these four digits as metadata during the contactless transaction. Older contactless terminals would ignore it and naively print four digits of the account number, whereas newer terminals might recognise that metadata and print that on the receipt instead.
It's also possible that the physical card's last four digits are being sent back to the terminal by the network.
The unpredictable number is an (of a few) inputs into the generation of the CVV3, which is also based on a dynamic key from the issuer. Key rotation is on the order of weeks to months (depending on issuer). This is the "unique number" per transaction (part of tag 57 https://emvlab.org/emvtags/show/t57/ )
DPAN is only good for card-present transactions, provided CVV3, transaction counters, etc.
Has anyone made a habit of rotating DPANs on a regular basis like this? Does Apple or your bank get irritated at some point?
The other week a store clerk failed to look up my purchase when using my physical credit card, but succeeded when using the same credit card via Apple Pay. I would have been out of luck if I had rotated my Apple Pay number.
So far my banks have not complained.
I once had a very long call trying to explain to a very upset Mastercard person why this behaviour wasn’t an issue. I don’t think they understood.
Signing a signature is basically obsolete - in fact I can't remember the last time I did. Restaurants usually have a wireless terminal they bring over.
It's strange how regional those types of things are though. I am always surprised traveling in the US when I'm asked to sign (even with chip or contactless, which makes zero sense).
I don't think I've signed anything for 10+ years tbh, but the UK went pretty heavily for chip and pin early one. But honestly it's a coinflip whether I remember my pin these days.
The EMV part requires the merchant device to be online or the process won't happen and the phone part requires user authentication; you'd have to break both at the same time to abuse it. Probably still possible, but much harder than stealing a card and using it until you hit the limit or get flagged.
Probably also why EMV contactless without PIN and EMV contactless with PIN have different limits (amount of transactions and transaction amounts).
If you use ApplePay on an older terminal, which does implement the more secure protocol, it falls back to the same protocol as used by contactless cards and is subject to the £30 limit.
First you need to join the Apple Developer Program. Why? I'm not developing an app.
To join the Apple developer program you need an Apple device that will do two factor auth. So I go buy an iPhone 6 with a cracked screen solely for this purpose.
Then you need Apple to approve your DUNS number. I am one of the minority who already had one, so I didn't have to go through the whole process with Dun & Bradstreet to get one, but Apple would not accept it for several weeks until suddenly they did, with no change to the number or other company info.
And then, you need to schedule a phone interview! This is the point I'm at right now, so I can't tell you how many more hurdles there are to clear. I haven't had luck yet with the Apple "click here and your phone will ring any moment with a call from us" button on their website. Phone never rings.
And I haven't even got to the part where I pay $100 before accepting any payments, which Stripe and PayPal sure don't require.
You have to endure a lot of friction to eliminate payment friction for your customers.
However, with Apple (okay, now Garmin) Pay, I never have to sign.
When it finally arrived in the mail (a week after request, literally hours before my flight), it turns out it's not even a Chip-and-PIN PIN, it's for cash advances. I still did a lot of signing reciepts and waiting for poor underpaid M&S cashiers to sort things out.
https://applepaydemo.apple.com
Unfortunately, their docs are explicit about discount codes, "Do not ask the user to perform any other tasks before presenting the payment request. For example, if the user needs to enter a discount code, you must ask for the code before they press the Apple Pay button."
https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/ApplePay_Guide/C...
Some place I could not use Apple Pay with was involved in a breach, and so my bank notified me that I was getting a new card, and to start using it as soon as it came in the mail.
At about the same time as I got the email notice that this was happening, I got a notification on my iPhone that the card had been updating in Apple Pay to the new one. No action was required on my part.
I have no idea how they did that. I know there is a credit card updater service provided by at least Visa, MC, Discover, and AmEx that allows merchants with those cards on-file to ask for updates. We use that where I work, but the interface to it involves posting a file that contains one record per card we want updated in a fixed field format straight out of the punched char days (but wider than punched card). Then, typically in two or three days, a similar file comes back with update records for some of those cards. More updates trickle in that way over the next few days. And some never get a response.
Anyone know what it takes to get access to the kind of updates Apple is getting, where apparently the banks push the updates and they are very timely? Is this something only very high volume entities can get?
This is literally the first time I've heard a use case that would actually make me care about contactless versus a swipe/insert. Grabbing my phone off the RAM mount would be considerably easier pulling my gloves off and trying to fish out my wallet.
In the past, I've always been incredibly apathetic toward the "convenience" factor of contactless, but that's a real -- if niche -- win.
It's all stuff which I never cared much about but definitely enjoy when it works right. It doesn't hurt that with the Apple Card I get 2% cash back when I use the phone.
I had forgotten that was a thing. I'll have to remember to reach for the phone the the next time I'm ordering something off of a second- or third-choice website.
We talk about Apple Pay as if that's the standard. We talk about Apple Pay as if it's what allows you to pay with your watch. It's not. Contactless payments are. You can read about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contactless_payment. The intro paragraph:
> Contactless payment systems are credit cards and debit cards, key fobs, smart cards, or other devices, including smartphones and other mobile devices, that use radio-frequency identification (RFID) or near field communication (NFC, e.g. Samsung Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Fitbit Pay, or any bank mobile application that supports contactless) for making secure payments.
So as you can see, Google Pay is practically identical to Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, etc. and neither of them are the standard. NFC payments are. And they don't have to be in an Apple device.
source on this? AFAIK apple doesn't share it, but they definitely have access to the data.
I can't find the page describing the program on Visa's website, but their privacy opt-out describes it pretty well [1].
Carrying 800 grams of coins around me all the time sucks.
Once again Apple's marketing makes people believe things that aren't true, without actually lying.
Again, Apple did a hell of a marketing job here.
In the US market, Apple Pay came on the scene way bigger and way earlier than anything else. The traditional issuers weren't interested. So of course Apple gets the credit: it was the one to actually field the technology.
Samsung Pay is different. It works with swipe terminals too, by generating a magnetic field that imitates a magstripe card. A few years ago this was a big deal: NFC acceptance was pretty much only at hipster coffee shops and food trucks with Square readers, where the clientele all had iPhones anyway. Not so much now that most terminals upgraded to comply with the EMV mandate also have NFC.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Pay_Send#/media/File:Th...
Disney World (Florida) notably spent a BILLION dollars implementing a wonderful contactless payments++ system called MagicBand. [1]
Last week I was shocked that at Disneyland (California), where they haven't implemented MagicBand, they not only don't accept Apple Pay or other contactless payments, they weren't even consistent about chip vs. mag swipe!
During one transaction, after unsuccessfully swiping, the teller told me to insert the chip in a tone like I've been living under a rock. I had defaulted to swipe after the previous 3 transactions had been. There was no post-it note like many businesses resort to.
If even Disney can't get this right in their highly-curated-experience theme park, I'm not holding my breath for universal adoption anytime soon.
At the very least, there is the integration between the MagicBand and FREEDOM-POS, the point of sale software running at Disney parks.
It could be as simple as the band functioning as a reference to the built-in EFT account called 'play money', which is a stored value account generated on a POS and assigned to a given serial number (say, a disposable wristband, season pass card number, MagicBand number) and either filled with cash to store and deplete, or linked to a credit card to charge indirectly.
It could be as complex as the MagicBand bypassing FREEDOM entirely and interfacing directly with a back-end server that knows the card details, merely racking up charges over time to be periodically charged directly to the customer's card.
Either way, I'd love to get a peek behind the curtain at the Disney IT operations, warts and oddities specifically.
You can pay with them in the parks (no fishing around for cash or your credit card), it links to your Disney accounts, you can use them as a ticket to get into the parks and it functions as your door key at Disney hotels and cruise ships.
And it all just works.
The amount of data they collect from this must be staggering.
(I was bringing a large family to the park, and wanted folks to be able to float between rooms.)
We ended up falling back to card keys.
Here’s some of the FCC filings: https://fccid.io/Q3E#axzz3XOMIw4yj
That's something Samsung got right with their execution. It also emulates a mag stripe so it works in way more places in the US (its always fun when casher tells you you don't accept contactless payments and they see it work)
That said, people mostly use cards; potentially because the bank apps that existed before were just really awful and didn't work the majority of the time. But Google Pay and Fitbit Pay work great.
By the way, the UK is still in Europe, even if they have left the EU :)
This would all be better if I ever saw anyone else use it, but I don't.
Edit: wanted to add that here in Portland, we have the special Apple Pay transit wallet for the bus, which is amazing! I only infrequently take the bus, and it's so nice to never worry about whether I have exact change for the fare.
The only time I have ever run into any kind of social friction (percieved or actual) it was only around the time that it had just rolled out and everyone would groan and say stuff like "yeah, it says we do apple pay but it wont work"
But after those initial bumps it is really prevalent and easy to use. I never feel like I am inconveniencing anyone.
I still get your reaction sometimes, or that look that says "I'm tolerating this, but you're annoying me."
Stores in NYC are reluctant to make upgrades because the profit margins are much narrower in NYC than in lesser cities.
Some people just don't want to be "that guy" holding up the line, for any reason. Even if it might have been faster to try contactless a second time.
A few months later my grocery store put up "now accepts Android Pay" signs. I went through the self checkout lane and the phone was read, but the payment never went through. Had to use my card eventually.
Then my expensive phone broke and I bought one without mobile payments.
But it did work at Dunkin Donuts a few times, so there's that.
I still carry a small amount of cash on me just in case, but the same £10 note has been sitting unused in my wallet since November now, slowly gathering dust.
There were conversations about bank notes because some hadn’t seen the newer ones before, despite them being around for what seems like ages now.
I too had a note sitting in my wallet waiting for such a circumstance. Now I have change and it’s weird that it feels alien. We used to do this for everything.
months? Its been years since I've seen a card reader that didn't have contactless.
The first place I ever saw it was 2010 at a rural Australian Mcdonalds.
UNTIL I realized that ApplePay worked on every contactless terminal. The bartenders & clerks looked at me a little funny, but when they realized they didn't have to do the goofy exception process required for a purchase signature, they didn't care.
Even so, though, cash is still king. I always have $100-200 on me.
Feeling rude happens because when you suddenly produce your phone or watch, you suddenly reveal you’ve been thinking of the transaction differently and maybe that the cashier was incorrect or ignorant to assume you would swipe your card. You are unmasking yourself, in a sense. Proactively mentioning it lets them work with you and share their knowledge about the terminal if it’s relevant.
These days I don't generally need to ask because the terminal have very conspicuous Apple Pay logos on them. But sometimes the terminal is kept behind the counter, so you can't see.
I've had several occasions (most recently at my vet) where I was told that it wouldn't work and I said, "Let's try it anyway," and it worked just fine.
When I’ve thought Apple Pay would have actually worked in that kind of situation, I try it next time I’m there (without asking first!)
Most of the remaining awkward are the cashiers/business that still like to "touch" the physical card itself (for whatever reason and/or ignorance), hiding the chip reader behind a counter or facing it away from the user. If the reader is too hidden you know not to try at all. The "pardon my reach" is sometimes embarrassing to try when the reader is in an accessible but awkward position, but sometimes I still like to try it, just to somewhat send a message that there are reasons they should move the reader closer to the buyer than the register and they just hadn't seen them yet.
You can double tap to pay even before the reader is ready, so that once it is, the transaction happens instantly.
I'm aware of this, because here in Canada, if you add a transit pass to Google Pay, the only options are 1) Las Vegas Monorail, 2) Melbourne myki, 3) Portland Hop and 4) Manatee County, Florida MCAT.
My local commuter rail "takes" Apple/Google Pay in the sense that you can buy a paper ticket via contactless payment - there are no turnstiles or fare collection, making it essentially an honour system.
On the other hand, both Las Vegas and Portland transit systems readily accepts foreign cards.
Clearly it works for someone because "10% of global transactions" but, I'm guessing it has something to do with how bad Apple is at dealing with international issues like the fact the App Store is completely fucked if you need apps from multiple countries I can only guess Apple Pay is just as fucked.
1. Get an Apple Watch. In the following, I will assume you wear this on your left wrist.
2. Set up Apple Pay on the watch. Keep the card you have set up as your main Apple Pay card in your left pants pocket.
3. When you wish to pay with Apple Pay in a situation where you feel self-conscious, reach into your left pocket with your left hand and get your card.
4. Move the card toward the terminal, at the same time using your right hand to double-click the side button on the watch to bring up Apple Pay.
5. Continue moving the card toward the terminal as if you are going to swipe or insert it as appropriate, but while doing this bring the watch near the place you would for Apple Pay.
6. If you get the haptic feedback that indicates a successful Apple Pay, great. Put your card back in your wallet, and no one is the wiser.
7. If you don't get the haptic feedback, go ahead and finish with the actual card.
(If you are worried about terminals that are a little slow with Apple Pay, and so you might get an Apple Pay response after you have gone ahead and inserted the card, you could modify step #7 to be pull the left hand away while using the right hand to continue with the physical card).
T(card) = time it takes to use a physical card
T(ap) = time it takes to use Apple Pay
T(fail) = time it takes to realize Apple Pay failed
P(fail) = probability that Apple Pay will fail to work
So if T(card) < T(ap) x [1-P(fail)] + [T(ap) + T(fail) + T(card)] x P(fail)
...then you should just use your physical card. I don't even try Apple Pay anymore because merchant support is so unpredictable and spotty.
I've found that AP either works or doesn't in the first couple seconds (and is overwhelmingly the former).
I apologized for being rude by looking at my phone during the payment, but that I had to authenticate with it with my face to be able to pay. She relaxed and said it was okay, so apparently the unfamiliarity was the source of the confusion.
They laughed.
“No, we don’t really track them. We have one main competitor. Credit cards. We care about Apple Pay being better, easier and more convenient to use than any of your credit cards.”
And then, finishing dinner, the guy paid with his Apple Watch, using Apple Pay. The waiter was stunned - he’d never seen anything like that before.
(Tbf I'm talking about everyday restaurant, not gastronomic experiences)
Money is often a taboo subject in the US, and I think that is bleeding into a slow adoption of touchless transactions in nice restaurants.
It will take at least 5 years for this part of US culture to give way to convenience and security.
*Note I've not spent much time on the west coast; I'm sure they're ahead on this
ha ha - except for the iphone, watch and apple pay; no special hardware nor software required.
Umm, except for the whole Apple device...
The same tech used by Apple Pay is directly built into a lot of credit cards.
I ask this because, as an Australian, I pay for essentially every single purchase on Apple Pay. Everyone I know uses mostly their phones to pay.
Everyone I know has been using contactless payments on their credit cards (or visa/mastercard debit cards) for the past 5 years.
No one enters their pins on transactions under $150. Depending on the payment method, that number can be a lot higher.
[1] https://transportnsw.info/tickets-opal/opal/contactless-paym...
It's not that there's heaps of different scenarios, it's that there's America and the rest of the world.
They didn't know all the bells and whistles on their machine. It'd be about as surprising as if I whipped out a personal check and they found their machine had a reader for that.
I'm American, my card doesn't do contactless, nor chip and pin. I also used old straight swipe cards while there for fun.
I used cards for most purchases except at the melbourne market and a few other places where cash was required.
We haven't needed a PIN to buy anything like dinner in Australia for close to a decade now. Only exception is if you are going for a more expensive dinner where you might be. But then I doubt your credit card company is overriding that security precaution.
Above the limit, with Apple/etc Pay, I usually need to sign and have the card physically on you if the merchant asks for it. I think even my Paywave card requires a signature if used via Google Pay, but a Pin without, but I almost never use that one for large transactions.
Above the limit with Paywave/Chip/etc would make you enter your pin (and you already have the card on you).
If you're paying for expensive things, Apple/Google/etc Pay is a bit worse UX in my experience.
In Australia signatures are not considered a valid form of identification for transactions.
It's PIN or nothing.
We use contact for everything, with the limit being (for me) $100. Signature is explicitly not allowed any more (overseas cards excepted), with anything over $100 requiring chip + PIN instead. When I say everything, I mean that I don't recall the last time I saw someone use cash to buy a coffee, and the one mate I have who uses cash when he's out at the pub is a unique anomaly to me. Even our public transport systems are (slowly) moving towards augmenting existing NFC transit cards with just allowing you to tap your CC on the reader and charging you a ticket fee directly. I generally don't even bother carrying cash any more, and the biggest payment issue I encounter is whether AmEx is supported (since contactless terminals don't necessarily display that during the payment process).
I would be taken aback if one waiter here was "stunned" by you not needing a PIN to buy things. For "most" to be so beggars belief. As a sibling comment said, the only explanation I can think of is that if you're clearly American due to your accent, then many service staff will be used to Americans being the single different group who can't use contactless and thus prepare to hand over a pen for signature whenever they hear the accent.
Also latest is about 51% of merchants have compatible equipment.
1.1% of sales is apple pay. Also usage numbers have gone down from 2018 to 2019. Seems like a puff piece to me?
Developed countries have more accessible and cheaper systems, like M-Pesa. In China, you generally just scan a QR code to make a payment. Neither of these systems piggyback on the expensive and slow credit card system.
So, I think this statistic might be as true as it is misleading. Impressive marketshare, just not as big a market.
Which is to say, after inventing the credit card, the US has since fallen behind.
Too busy inventing The Internet I suppose ...
Yes, it has indeed.
That's what the story of Apple's market shares and image around the world seems to paint, anyway (the US is really an outlier, no other country buys anywhere near as many iPhones except Sweden, Japan and Switzerland iirc).
Apple is successfully pivoting into a luxury brand + service provider (let's call it the Porsche or Vuitton of consumer devices), and I think this article / thread goes to show that they've now effectively conquered their customers' wallet — as in, the product category.
Well played, hats off, but the genius really was in developing the strategy itself: suppose you have $200bn sitting in cash offshore that you can't bring back easily, and you also happen to have the 10-20% richest people on Earth as customers. Well, what can you do with those? ... Offer a financial service maybe, like payments? Tim Cook: hold my pad
I really do think the 5% figure might be every bit as real as the price tag of the latest flagships, as real as the kind of global wealth that allows casually spending ~4 figures on a phone in 2020.
And since the US corporate tax rate was cut back to normal global levels, they've been repatriating the extra overseas cash [1] and mostly using it to fund buybacks and dividends.
[0]: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2019/01/30/900-million-iphones...
[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-17/apple-exp...
As soon as a city rolls out NFC support for public transport, that's going to be an instant boost of millions of transactions per year, because anybody with a smartphone or smartwatch doesn't have to bother with the hassle of buying tickets or topping up a transit card any more, they just have to wave their watch at the reader. Compare a transit card, where people typically top it up for weeks at a time with a single cash or credit card transaction, to Apple Pay, where there's at least one transaction every single day you travel.
I'm used to living in places where NFC support in public transport is ubiquitous, and when I visited San Francisco recently, it felt like I was living in a time warp having to mess around with a Clipper card. BART has ~125 million trips per year. How many transactions per year do you think Apple Pay will be boosted by when BART finally supports it? And that's just one single location for one use case.
Apple Pay on my Apple Watch saved my bacon. Hotel, restaurant, gift shop, trading post... every place that takes plastic there take Apple Pay.
I think the reason is that because of limited connectivity, they're a little late to the credit card game, so all of their terminals and processes are the new tech. There's no legacy gear or processes to upgrade from.
Which is similar for the whole credit card arena in general. People keep posting on here about America being backwards when it comes to credit cards and in the "civilized world" (Is there a more condescending Eurotrash phrase than that?) the banking system is more advanced. The fact is that America has had mass deployment of credit cards for far longer than other nations, so naturally it will take longer to upgrade. Greenfields are always easier to build on.
Third, I like seeing the visual feedback confirming on the screen of the payment device, which you can't do with a watch held with it's face to the reader. Sure, it vibrates, but that isn't a great indicator of success IMO.
You're doing it wrong.
Pull phone out → double-click wallet button → Authenticate face → Hold next to reader → done.
Anyway, thanks for the tip (being sincere here).
It's also online:
Pull phone out → double-click wallet button → Authenticate face → Pause for a long time → Hold next to reader → done.
NFC (same as contactless CCs), not Bluetooth.
I believe Apple Pay supports payments >£30 but I use Android Pay and it has never allowed me to exceed £30. I understand that it is probably a limitation of the terminal in many cases but I have observed an Apple Pay transation exceed £30 and then been rejected by my Android Pay device on the same terminal in one case.
Mostly the fault of a cheap implementation from my understanding as they them don't have the data required to verify the CDCVM.
https://www.barclays.co.uk/current-accounts/debit-cards/cont...
Every time you make payments totalling €150 (£127) since you last entered your PIN, the contactless transaction will be declined. And a payment will be declined every time you’ve made five contactless payments in a row.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/02/06/new-europe...
Most of my cards have a $100 contactless limit for most retailers. Costco gets $200.
This is only for magstripe-emulation contactless, which is very regrettably a thing, thanks United States! The civilised world uses true EMV contactless.
Edit: Huh, even the US will be forced to use EMV contactless soon, apparently. Makes sense that Visa and Mastercard wouldn't want to support that massive fraud risk for long.
Do you have any details on that?
From my understanding skimming is mostly an issue for magstripe, as contactless (at least in the proper EMV implementation) is cryptographically secured. There is not much to skim.
I'm aware of a few papers on relay or downgrade attacks, but I would consider them mostly of theoretical relevance (e.g. https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/woot13/woot13... or https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c8a6/9d63996f8f1eef414dbd29...)
When I had a Washington State combined driver's license/North America passport, it came with one of those little sleeves. So there must be some kind of threat, or the government wouldn't hand those out.
These schemes are independent of physical transfer mechanism (well, mostly)
Edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contactless_smart_card you might be talking about MSD while I'm talking about EMV. C'mon, America, you're better than that
If you just wave the authentication device, it is less likely to communicate surface contamination.
Weirdly enough, I have visited a US retailer that did not have working chip, but working contactless.
I had an old Amex card that had it but nobody had the readers at the time. Then the readers appeared about 3-5 years ago but the contactless cards had been mostly withdrawn. Now they’re coming back, my most recently issued Amex and Chase cards in the last year or so have been contactless.
It would be interesting to possibly make some generalizations about how much money Apple vs. Android users spend in general, even outside their respective app stores. Maybe not useful generalizations, but I'm interested nonetheless.
(I say this as an Android user who loves Google Pay and wishes it were available for web-based payments like Apple Pay is.)
Google Pay: https://support.google.com/pay/answer/7405561?hl=en Apple Pay: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204916#canada
Still, I think that Apples deep ecosystem integration will ultimately allow them to make a really compelling payments platform. The existing work on the Apple Card is surprisingly compelling. By just offering some basic, but fun bookkeeping (the colors changing on the digital card and a list of purchases), Apple has already made a product many of my peers want to use.
I expect peer to peer payments to get more attention and some "Apple Health for Money" product to come out in the medium term future.
This is common in these articles. For some reason the west is entirely unaware of WeChat, despite it being massive in terms of userbase. I'm starting to see restaurants in the Bay Area that take either Cash or WeChat... no Apple Pay in sight.
In general, the checkout flow is garbage far too often.
I've found the official Apple list [1] to be very accurate. There seems to be quite a few on the Switzerland list that don't have (Credit cards) behind them.
Well yeah. Because the banks don't make money with debit cards so they do everything possible to sell you a credit card. That's why in Switzerland you have this special variant of a Meastro which you can't pay online. That's a special deal with Mastercard for Switzerland only because Mastercard generally doesn't allow blocking this.
The seller's terminal does not have to know about Apple Pay for it to work, the phone just pretends it's a card.
1) Because rewards programs can be so lucrative per-category, I wind up using like 5 different credit cards constantly. That's too thick to keep in my wallet, so I never bothered before... but now it's effortless on my phone. Now I basically get 3-5% back on most stuff instead of the old 1-2%. It adds up.
2) Chips seem to degrade after a while, as anything contact-based seems finicky. Apple Pay doesn't always work on the first try... but it always works by the second. Which is more than I can say for credit cards, god only knows why.
So now I really just keep one physical credit card on hand -- the one that gives me most rewards dining out, since you need a card to hand them (in the US anyways) -- and to use for the occasional instance a store's terminal doesn't accept Apple Pay (mostly public transit vending machines these days).
This is the most annoying thing. Chips seem to be much less reliable than the mag stripe and not all systems are NFC. On my daily usage cards in 1/3 of the cases it takes 2-3 tries ( ~30-45 seconds per try ) and in 1/2 of those cases it becomes "Use mag stripe" which takes another 30-45 seconds
Remember when all the cashiers would keep some kind of plastic film or tape nearby to fold your card into so the mag stripe would read? Nobody knew why it worked, but it fixed the problem half the time. But I still remember having to call my credit card company to send me an early replacement about half the time due to a mag stripe that just didn't work anymore.
Chips are just equally bad in their own way. Some machines take an oddly high amount of force to push it in all the way (it feels like it's in earlier but it's not)... and then there's just some kind of wearing down of contact surfaces or something that blocks the connection other times.
It's funny, I never would have expected wireless to be more reliable than physical... but because there are no contacts to wear out, it really is over the long term.
I have to admit, I welcome apple pay with a lot of sceptisism. In my perspective, a lot of innovation in payment over the recent years has been towards better ways of extracting value from basic transactions, or selling confusing products to financially illiterate consumer. With the exception of contactless and mobile payments, which our public solution has picked up as quickly as the commercial vendors.
https://time.com/3558936/fingerprint-password-fifth-amendmen...
Or FaceID
what's the threat model here? that law enforcement will force to make apple pay transactions? that law enforcement will request fingerprint data from apple?
> Apple Pay accounts for about 5% of global card transactions and is on pace to handle 1-in-10 such payments by 2025,
Now that gas stations and supermarkets everywhere support it I absolute view it as an essential part of life. I just wish that instead of using NFC technology we had adapted QR code payment systems so that paying at dine-in restaurants wouldn't be awkward.
That said, facial recognition to pay is a huge step backward. The phone has be held just the right way, the side button double-clicked, and you have to look directly at it... and even then it does not work 100% of the time! The fingerprint reader was way better for paying.
Transport in the uk is moving to having electronic tickets on their own rfid cards which you store your ticket on which is even quicker
The unique id per transaction (instead of the possibly hacked POS getting your actual card data) is just icing on the cake.
People are still surprised that it doesn't ask for the pin for transactions over the usual limit though.
This was really a game changer.
There was high profile case of an iPhone user who got fined over £600 because the phone died and they could not show the rail ticket to the guard on the train.
She was lucky enough to get it picked up by the national press, probably knew someone.
That means if you can't show your ticket to a guard when requested, even if you did have a ticket on your phone, did have a mobile battery pack, did have a spare wifi hotspot for signal, did have a spare phone incase the first failed, and did have a spare finger in case of your finger suddenly falling off, you are still breaking the law, and can still get a criminal record and go to prison for it.
And due to the way rail companies are allowed to prosecute you directly rather than involving the police or CPS, you can be sure they will prosecute in these cases.
With certain NFC transit cards, the iPhone can now emulate them even when the main OS shut down due to low battery!
FT link (free) [1]
FTAlphaville link (registration required, no paywall) [2]
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/e8a177d4-dfae-11e9-9743-db5a37048...
[2] https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2019/10/09/1570632197000/When-fi...
Banks in the UK (incl. Monzo) have recently added security restrictions on contactless cards which means after they've been used contactless so many times (up to £100 I think) you have to use chip-and-pin to 'reset' the limit or you'll be declined. Monzo are quite good in the fact they give you a notification when you're due to chip-and-pin but it's still annoying.
Apple Pay doesn't have that restriction and is overall more secure with the FaceID/fingerprint security too.
Wonder what the stats are for Google Pay too
I settled a hotel bill for EUR1200.00 using Apple Pay. Totally painless; no card required.
It's super convenient — before it I was thinking of switching to Android, once the battery on my iPhone 8 will become unusable, but Apple Pay will probably keep me on iPhone. No other similar service is available for Android yet.
I love Apple Pay for online website purchases. So easy to not have to create an account for everything.
For IRL transactions, my contactless card is easier than dealing with my phone, double tapping and face authenticating.
Say what? I live in a rural part of Canada and contactless payments are accepted nearly everywhere, most right at the pump. At worst you're using chip and pin. I can't even remember the last time I had to sign my name for a credit card transaction.
Also today a station actually declined my apple pay and I still had to go in. Guess it's not perfect yet.
Apple pay is not useful outside of the US as contactless cards are better (don't need to unlock your phone and play around with a weird UI to make a payment), and prevalent. Weirdly within the US most cards dont have them.
Within the US very few places support NFC, and super common workflows like paying at a sit down restaurant never support it (because of tipping).
I suspect the research firm's data is very incomplete, or they are calling contactless payments "Apple Pay".
Just for the sake of askance, is Apple Pay a card transaction?
Edit: I realize Apple Pay in other markets would be hard if they wanted to keep the 1%/2% daily cash feature due to transaction fee limits, as the other comment has said.
Plastic cards and P(iece)O(f)S(hit) terminals with a RJ45 connector? No man, you just scan this QR code here.
They did not make a statement about whether we like cashless or even contactless payments, just that the associated fees are limited, which makes rewards programs essentially infeasible.
I care much more about privacy than security.
Adoption of technologies like NFC payments in public transport is a good metric to see how competent a local government is.
Chicago and Miami are likely to follow suit since they already support Fitbit Pay (disclaimer: my employer, but I don't speak for them) - https://www.fitbit.com/us/technology/fitbit-pay/banks
It is still slower than what I'm used to in Japan, where people have been paying for transit with their phone since 2001 or 2002. (Tokyo also went from 50-ish pilot stations to 500 production stations in just a few months. In New York, I think 2023 is the estimated completion date?)
Vancouver just enabled this on their transit system, and they had posters all over warning people to not swipe their whole wallet over the readers like they were used to doing.
I actually assumed Clipper was RFID, but turns out it's NFC after all (the Wikipedia article also notes that it's a common misconception that it uses RFID).
I can’t believe that the best thing the credit industry could come up with was chip and pin. Slow, insecure[1], and awful experience. Begone, parasites.
1. https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/chip-and-pin-cards-insecure/1...
I don't see how waving my watch in front of the POS would make this easier, it would actually be more cumbersome depending on how the POS is presented.
(For example, the Clipper card machine...)
I really think some messaging to change it from "Please Wait" to "Waiting for cashier" would help the real non-tech-savvy people. My parents almost always have issues with the chip because of this. They'll pull out the card at the wrong time and such.
On the other hand, I don't recall a merchant where I could physically insert my card whenever I wanted, so the A/G Pay option is better in many/most places, even if there are some where you have to wait.
Their POS software was obviously written by competent people who care about what they're doing. Not by clowns laid off by Barnum & Bailey.
Edit: I did a few minutes of reflection about this, since it's an astonishing claim compared to standard practices. But what's probably happening has to do with membership. A checkout begins with the POS system scanning a membership card. So the system already knows exactly who they are dealing with. Then the chip read can probably do less in terms of the transaction; perhaps the transaction is automatically approved once an initial chip read verifies that the card is present.
Just to be clear, this is using a standard Visa EMV credit card, not a Costco affiliated card.
Not where I live.
About 20 yeas ago before wide spread use on the internet in the UK they where looking at using the ISDN D channel to do card authentication
Contactless payment wasn't Apple's innovation, although maybe you could say that popularizing it in the US was.
this seems a limitation on your side (bank?), I've used contactless for larger expenses in other parts of Europe without issues (inserting a PIN).
https://www.which.co.uk/news/2015/07/which-reveals-contactle...
There is a reason they are not being promoted in major markets.
The security issue isn't a big deal since (a) payments are limited to small amounts e.g. < $100 and (b) banks will indemnify you against credit card theft.
But the US doesn't seem to have discovered pin numbers.
And judging by other posts for this story, you haven't discovered contactless payments either. They were available long before Apple Pay.
I don't care how hyper-secure Apple Pay is. Cash also has some pretty weak security and people seem to use it just fine, the rare pickpocketing notwithstanding.
From an UX point of view, using something at your fingertips to wave is more natural and it's also clear you are paying for something. Contorting your wrist so the Watch is close to the POS seems almost painful in some situations. Maybe waving the phone close to the POS would be better, but you have to reach for your phone the same way you reach for your card so it's a draw.
But yes, I too use Apple Pay whenever possible. I feel like I'm doing my small part to drag the industry forward. (Though my secret hope is that Visa and Mastercard get replaced with something else. Hopefully that's easier to do after their intermediated by Apple Pay)