Samsung Pay

[Alex]

Finally tried it today. Paid for something with my phone. It almost worked (I didn't realize the digital card has a different last 4 numbers than the real card). Later I used it again, and it worked fine. And even later at a different store, worked fine there as well (neither required the 4 digit confirmation). Neat.

Pretty much any modern credit card terminal has that NFC interface, they just don't advertise it. Will try using it a bunch more at places I frequent; it does seem just one half-step easier than having to take a card out of a wallet, since we're all holding our phones 97% of the time anyway.

Samsung Pay link

[InvisiBill]

The local grocery store now takes Apple Pay. As you said, it's about half a step easier than using my physical card. What I like most is that the transaction is tokenized, so even if the store's data is breached, my actual card number shouldn't be in there.

[Snake]

I've been kinda scared to use my Apple Pay until I hear from others if it's safe. Now that I've heard from the both of you I think I'll give it a try.

[InvisiBill]

Most credit card fraud happens when you hand the card to a person, like when you give it to the waiter in a restaurant. Most electronic CC fraud happens when a company's database is accessed, which means you're equally vulnerable regardless of how your card number got into their records. Skimmers on gas pumps, ATMs, etc. have become fairly popular around here lately, but there's a relatively tiny amount of fraud that takes place when you're actually supplying your card number in an online form or swiping it at a terminal.

With Apple Pay, the actual card number isn't saved on the phone. When you add your card, it checks with the bank, and a "virtual CC number" is created and stored on your phone. It's stored in a special secure chip in the phone, and there's encryption and stuff used for the data. Any transactions you do with Apple Pay use this virtual number instead of your actual card number. If a store got hacked and exposed your number, you'd only have to cancel the virtual number used by Apple Pay, not your actual CC number.

https://www.google.com/search?q=appl...ction+security has a lot of results with info on all this. So far, the only fraud I've heard of with Apple Pay is people adding stolen card info to phones (as opposed to having to make fake physical cards with the stolen info). Note that in the process of initially adding a card to Apple Pay, Apple simply asks the bank if it's ok to add the card - they left it completely up to the banks to determine validity of the card. So if someone steals your card info and adds it to their own phone's Apple Pay, it went through because your bank told them it was ok.

[Alex]

Very little of this risk is directly borne by consumers anyway. Even if none of the protections were in place (in any of these credit-card linked electronic payment systems), the laws/regulations around credit are heavily biased to the consumer anyway in this space. The card companies are also protected pretty well from that standpoint. It's the merchants who are taking on much of the risk, in return for the added business of it being easier for their customers to pay them. Someone steals your credit card number and buys whatever? Call your card company, it's not your responsibility (other than a potential $50 limit in some circumstances, which is almost never applied). Someone places a skimmer at a business, and grabs a pile of credit card info? The business eats much of that cost, with some shared by the card provider and/or bank depending on circumstances.