Your security is just dandy, Apple Pay, but here comes Android

Existing cards

Perhaps Independent IT security consultant Paul Moore would be a little less blasé about the use of existing contactless cards were he to have his card skimmed. That happened to me a few months ago, and caused me quite a bit of bother. That couldn't happen with Apple Pay and, presumably, similar systems in the pipeline.

"“The UK launch will boost the payments industry as a whole, but however cool the technology, it will take years to reach anything near mainstream adoption," said Rich Wagner, chief exec and founder Advanced Payment Solutions, and an advisory board member of the Emerging Payments Association.

“However, it’s worth noting that Apple’s margins will be far lower in the UK than in the US, due to the huge discrepancy in interchange fee rates between the two continents. This reduces the commercial opportunity for Apple Pay in this market," he warned."

Come on Register. Identify when you are interviewing a competitor (not a direct competitor but a competitor nevertheless), it makes a big difference to the credibility of what they are saying. For a start, Apple pay has the fastest adoption rate of all the competing solutions, secondly Apple customers are simply worth far more as consumers. Online transactions, App Store revenues and value per transaction are all far, far higher for Apple customers than competitor customers. Retailers are not going to be missing out on the opportunity to satisfy the needs of retails most valuable customers. It won't happen ibstabtly, but it won't take too long either. In the U.S. holdout stores are rapidly changing their minds and adopting Apple pay for this very reason.

Lastly If margins are lower for Apple for Apple Pay transactions in the UK, so what? They aren't doing it for the per transaction margin, which whilst nice is not a big business for them. They are doing it to sell phones. The margin makes zero difference to that and so will make zero difference to the effort they put in to promote Apple pay (thus illustrating if Mr Wagner is an "expert," he's an "expert competitor" and isn't being quite as objective as he is trying to sound).

Barclays bPay

The revised generation of Barclays contactless NFC chip is out but I think they missed a trick.

The chip comes in three packages, naked, wristband and keyfob. The naked one you stick on the back of your phone or whatever. The wristband is designed for festivals sports etc. The interesting one is the key fob and this is where I think they missed a trick. My gripe with all contactless devices is that they are permanently 'live'. It's like walking around with your purse or wallet open and on show. If waved near an active reader they will make a payment. Which is a real pain if you have multiple wireless debit cards in your wallet, how would you know which one just paid out?

What the keyfob needs is a simple button which when held down enables the chip. The equivalent of opening your wallet which when used, immediately snaps shut.

Longevity

> Add the fact that fingerprints stay with you for life and

Sounds like someone never done a days real work in their lives.

My finger print reader worked fine for months till I decided to undo a nut and bolt with my fingers. The scans don't work any more. The kids school uses fingerprint scanners to their meal system, my eldest stupidly touched a piece of hot gauze in chemistry and their scanning system won't recognised his dabs anymore, nor accept new dabs for him.

Finger prints ain't for life.

Is there a tumblr or something with pictures of people paying for things with an enormous iPad? I want to see that. Like the one with pictures of people in red trousers.

Good article

Independent IT security consultant Paul Moore (one such critic) noted: "I'd rather de-couple my payment card from a mobile device. It's safer IMO. ‪#ApplePay‬ doesn't solve a problem I don't have."

Can't really argue with that.

Interoperability is key and payment systems are fairly well regulated in Europe, hence the far lower margins.

Convenience?

"a convenient way to make payments of up to £20 without the need to fork out their debit or credit cards"

Because taking a credit card out of your pocket is so much less convenient than taking a phone out of your pocket. It's the same problem with "smart" watches - adding convenience in a place that wasn't lacking it in the first place isn't really a big selling point.

On the other hand, I don't recall ever having a card payment fail because my battery had run out.

Paying with an iPad

I can't imagine anyone ever paying for anything with an iPad in Blackpool....Round here the police wouldn't be too sympathetic if you were mugged for it afterwards either.

Meh

I don't just have payment cards in my wallet - I have cash (as not everyone takes cards - the coffee van that comes round to my client site for example), my card for the AA, my Tesco clubcard. I like the technology and where it is going, but I'll still need my wallet for now and so I don't see a great benefit (certainly not enough to make me replace my Android phone for an Apple one next upgrade cycle)

I want some of what they are smoking

"...such as tamper-proofing software..."

Really.

If you're a tiny bit OCD then the main problem with entering a pin on a pad is the hygiene factor. Do I really want to be dabbing the same keys that a thousand other people have pressed that day? I suppose you could use a key or something to provide some physical separation from the filth magnet that is the key pad.

I'm only being half serious really. There is a marginal convenience and time improvement with contactless in my experience and as a result it is my preferred method.

As far as I can see Apple pay is completely pointless for the following reasons:

1. I have to carry my card with me anyway in case I wish to make a purchase at a store which does not have a contactless reader - presumably this problem will diminish to zero ultimately

2. My card has no battery to go flat, is relatively small (I don't carry a wallet) and therefore easy to carry. I can leave a backup (different) card in my bag too in case I lose my main card.

3. My card is free (effectively) whereas an iPhone is really rather expensive.

In short I think it will be a long time before I leave the house without a credit or debit card in my pocket and since the contactless card is already very convenient I don't see the need for Apple pay other than as a novelty.

I'm completely ignoring the security points in the article here obviously, but this is just the way I see things.

trollin time

The problem with Android pay systems is it assumes Android punters have much to spend. Android obviously had it first and can probably stay ahead on the technology but the whole thing was DOA until Apple came along.

Retailers don't have access to card info?

Is it true that retailers don't have access to card info? If it was, then it wouldn't work on TFL, but it does, see https://tfl.gov.uk/fares-and-payments/contactless/other-methods-of-contactless-payment/apple-pay?cid=applepay

They know that you've bonked in and out of the network with the same phone/card combination, so they can charge the correct fare for the journey rather than two penalty fares. They know if you bonk back into the network at a nearby station on a different line so they can treat it as a continuation of the previous journey rather than a new one, if it is a recognised pair of interchange stations. They know if you have reached the daily or weekly charging cap and are entitled to free journeys for the rest of the day or week, and they can request a single payment from your bank at the end of the day for every journey you made that day. You can register on their website with your card details to get travel statements showing all the journeys you've made.

Waiting in the wings is ... Android Pay

Waiting in the wings is Zapp with Pay By Bank App.

Vocalink, the company behind Faster Payments in the UK and Immediate Payments in Singapore is launching Pay By Bank App for payments in the autumn removing the need for cards and wallets when shopping online.

Already in development is work to bring the feature to NFC equipped phones allowing contactless payments in shops again without registering cards or creating wallets.

who pays

So Apple get paid a small slice per transaction, which is to say using the phone costs more than using the card. Who ultimately foots the bill for that? You already know the answer.

Seems to me very similar to having your airport boarding card on your phone - quite cool the first couple of times but rapidly becomes annoying.

Multiple cards

So I get the idea of a DAN (Device Account Number) associated with the phone but if this is how a transaction is identified, how does it work if you don't select your default card? There must be another step not mentioned anywhere I've seen.

If it quacks like a duck...

These nice 16 digit tokens that everyone is jumping to as a way to bypass some PCI-DSS issues leave out one small problem. If it looks like a card number, from the PCI-DSS point of view, it is a card number.

It is amazing that we are still not using strong public/private key encryption to move data around the credit card networks.

Opinions of a user

So as someone who has actually used Apple Pay (on both sides of the pond), I actually quite like it.

It didn't magically solve a problem in my life, however I do rate it as an improvement.

I have four US cards registered against the iPay thing (only one of which is natively NFC - an amex, and three visas from two different banks) and two from the UK (Nationwide in case anyone cares). I like that it gives me the option, and it seems to remember which card I used where last as the one it pops up first seems to be tied to whatever I used at the location last (one of my cards gives me better cash back on fuel, the other has a better rate for pretty much everything else).

I am still required to use a PIN however if I use it against a debit account (confusingly, one can present a US debit card as a credit card at POS terminals), so I'm not sure how that works.

The one thing I find particularly curious about the UK implementation is the 20 pound cap. Does anyone know why that is? Here in the states I can spend as much as the bank will let me (as far as I'm aware...I think the largest transaction I've put through Apple pay was about $800)

The one thing I'd love for them to add to the phone would be some form of ID verification, such that if I forget my wallet and I meet with a particularly officious checkout operator that really won't accept that I'm legally old enough to buy whatever booze happens to be in my cart