Comment by deftnerd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by deftnerd | Hacker News Reader

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I'm in the payment space, so I have a few thoughts on this. 1. Payment through mobile wallets prevents employees and corporations you're paying from actually getting access to your card number. This removes the risk of fraud and theft by employees skimming numbers from your card and from corporate DB breaches

2. I am absent minded and often accidentally leave the house without my wallet and this allows me to still pay for things

3. Phones might die if you drop them or the battery dies, but I'm a lot more attached to my phone because I use it several times an hour. I'm a lot more aware of it and am able to make sure that it's charged and available. Occasions of it breaking only occur at most once every year or two.

4. By using my mobile payment app, I have a clear view of my current balances in one place without having to open banking apps or websites and allows me to view my current financial profile without having to log in anywhere.

5. With cards, the company I do business with is able to build purchase data profiles on me and sell the data onto other parties without my control. With Apple, I know it's just about their 0.15% processing fee without data mining. With google, I know it's just for Google's internal analytics and not being sold onto data brokers for sale to potentially hundreds of purchase analytics companies.

#2 is a big one for me. As a father of two kids under 4, I can't tell you how disappointing it is to take the time to load them into the car take them to the grocery store, only to realize that I've forgotten my wallet while I'm standing in the produce section.

This happened to me about a month ago, but unfortunately my local grocer didn't accept NFC payments, so I had to leave.

I leave the house with 4 things. They go in different places.

Wallet, front left pocket.

Phone, front right pocket.

Keys, back right pocket.

Knife, clipped to front right pocket.

I pat my pockets anytime I'm leaving the house or the car to be sure I have everything. When I'm missing one I feel...strange.

Same here (different pockets, minus the knife, plus a space pen and notepad). I pat my pockets just about every time I stand up. Saved myself quite a lot of hassle by getting into this habit.

I couldn't do without the knife, I use it nearly every day for something. Opening a package, peeling an orange, etc.

What's weird is when I'm not wearing jeans or pants/shorts with pockets--say a bathing suit. I keep stuff in my hands, then--but I feel really paranoid and I keep checking and rechecking to make sure I still have my wallet/phone.

When I break this habit, I end up doing things like locking my keys in my car.

Having been using Apple Pay for about a month, 1 and 5 are the keys for me. After Target, Home Depot, TJ Maxx... I know I'm not responsible for any fraudulent charges (I've had 2 reversed a while ago), but it's still a pain to go through.

I know that any system is only as strong as its weakest link, so anytime I use my normal card I'm still at risk of whatever retailer I'm at getting hacked, but I figure that the more I use the EMV chip or Apple Pay, the more my card company and the retailers know there's another person out there that cares about this sort of stuff and thus one more reason to invest in the more secure POS terminals.

(4 happens anyway; I get a notification whenever my card is used, whether it's the card or the phone)

>This removes the risk of fraud and theft by employees skimming numbers from your card and from corporate DB breaches

Why not just follow the rest of the world and actually implement Chip and PIN instead? All the security benefits with none of the privacy drawbacks.

It's far from 'the rest of the world.' The United States has far more POSes than any other country that has fully implemented Chip and PIN. Considering even small countries have only switched over in the past few years, it's far from surprising that the US hasn't transitioned yet.

That being said, Chip & PIN is making inroads in the US. Visa is doing its liability shift in October of this year, which should make it more attractive to vendors.

I think i'm supposed to point out here that NZ (and Aus) has had a free national POS system in place since the 1980s called EFTPOS. really weird traveling in the 90s and having to start thinking about cash again... It works wonderfully - that's typically a cue to start buggerising around with it and we've just started that adventure with contactless credit cards that don't need PIN codes - what's the worst that could happen? ;-)

I didn't know that phone payments reduces fraud risk. That's a very good benefit. Do you know how it works for charge-backs?

To point #2, if you're absent-minded, don't you ever leave home without your phone? I hate those days. Worse than a bad hair day, IMHO.

I like the idea of fewer fees for merchants. Being a merchant myself, I think those fees are out of line with the service being rendered. Since cc payments are kind of a monopoly, it's nice to see some competition.

I think I'll have to set up an account and try it out.

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