Hacker News Reader

> What is generated per transaction is the EMV unpredictable number, but this is part of the EMV protocol and done for any EMV transaction.

What about when magstripe emulation is in use, does Apple Pay support that in the US?

View on HN

Nope, Apple Pay is EMV only.

Only Samsung Pay does magstripe emulation.

Are you sure? Only Samsung (and LG apparently?) have the hardware feature where it tricks a magnetic stripe reader into thinking a card was swiped. However, the kind of magstripe emulation I meant is a feature of EMV where it can provide the same information as a magnetic stripe would, but over NFC, for compatibility with legacy (US) payment systems. Does Apple not support this latter system either? (It's apparently not supported for Apple Card, but Google isn't helping me for Apple Pay.)

EMV is the antithesis of magstripe and the two have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Contactless EMV is NFC.

EMV transactions still use track data format from magstripe world to ensure backward compatibility.

Unfortunately the United States exists, so there has been a need for magstripe emulation over NFC. I don't know exactly how it works — I think it's some kind of hack on top of EMV — but it does exist.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com