I use Apple Pay all the time via watch and phone. Only problem is only a fraction of places accept this method of payment. Restaurants and most smaller merchants do not accept Apple Pay unfortunately. One of my CC’S was hacked today and the hacker has been using it at Nordstrom’s and other places. Bank caught it and closed the card fortunately. How did my card get hacked? Is it because at some places they do not accept chips and I have to swipe my card for a payment or can chip cards be hacked as well? Is Apple Pay the most secure way to pay for things? Eventually Apple Pay will be available everywhere. In 2000 I remember most Fast food places did not accept cards but only cash. Yes eventually all will do Apple Pay.
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Apple Pay
- Thread starter jwolf6589
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Your cc number could have been swiped long ago from almost any place. Yes pay is more secure, but the best defense is to log into your credit card online frequently and have purchase alerts set up. Theft of cc info is very difficult to avoid.
I once got a letter from my bank asking if I had purchased 2 tickets to Greece. Of course I had not. I wondered where and how could my card info have been taken from and the only thing I could think of was that I used it in a restaurant where the waiter took it away from me for about 5 minutes. No telling what he may have done with it there. Another place to be aware of is gas stations which allow you to swipe the card out at the pump where there is no one attending. People can and do put card readers into these credit card swipers...a device which can read the magnetic strip on your card. The gas station I use has a sticker attached to it which says "If sticker is missing do not use this pump, Alert attendant iniside." I occasionally do see this sticker missing and will not use that pump. You never know.
Chip cards are definitely safer but no they are not perfect. I am not sure things like Apple pay will eventually take over or not, but if they do I am afraid even they will eventually be able to be hacked. Best advice is to be careful, always be alert and just realize that there are and always will be people trying to screw you.
Chip cards are definitely safer but no they are not perfect. I am not sure things like Apple pay will eventually take over or not, but if they do I am afraid even they will eventually be able to be hacked. Best advice is to be careful, always be alert and just realize that there are and always will be people trying to screw you.
Yes.
Apple Pay generates a single-use only token. No personal information of yours is transmitted to the reader, and even if the reader was compromised, all the hacker would get is useless data. No possibility of them being able to compromise your card.
Outside of restaurants, I am able to use Apple Pay at the majority of places I shop. Now that Target accepts it, Home Depot is the last hold out for places I go regularly.
When my last card was compromised I was completely surprised that I could keep using it in Apple Pay while I was waiting for a new physical card. I can pay with Apple Pay at a lot more places than I used to but there's obviously still a long way to go.
Start by avoiding swiping at all costs. Cards are still being skimmed in the US because a lot of places still process payment by swiping cards. Not to mention that 99% of the restaurants in the US still have to take away all cards for payment too. If you’re going to use the actual card, make sure you can at least insert it in the chip slot. If you can’t, don’t shop at that place. As long as there is no regulation requiring them to drop swiping, it’s our only way as customers to make the merchants react.
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That’s because Apple Pay allows the bank to assign your iphone and/or apple watch “card” numbers that are different from the one on your physical card (called a device account number). Since those other numbers aren’t compromised, you can continue using your device(s) to make purchases. You’ll also notice that, as soon as your bank issues a new card to replace the one that was compromised, the reference image shown on your iphone and/or apple watch when you open apple pay to make a payment will immediately change to show the last four digits of the newly issued card instead of the old compromised one
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And I can use it even at restaurants here in Mexico. And also at gas stations, another scenario where in the US apple pay more often than not can’t be used (at least not in the pumps area).
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Thanks for sharing that story about the fraudulent charge for tickets to Greece. That’s exactly why most other countries have regulations in place that require all sit down restaurants to be able to bring payment to the customers’ table instead of taking their cards away, but no such regulations exist yet in the US nor does it look like they will anytime soon.
As for gas stations in the US, the readers on the pumps are still magnetic stripe most of the time and that’s why a lot of card skimming still occurs at those places. In the rest of the world, magnetic stripe was abandoned nearly a decade ago because of that, so that’s not really a problem anymore.
Ironically in Mexico, a country often regarded by Americans (including Apple’s own execs apparently) as a primitive place where all transactions are made in cash and barter, I can pay with apple pay at a lot more sit down restaurants (almost all by now) and gas stations than in the US. This despite that Apple thinks we’re so primitive that we don’t need Apple Pay and hadn’t even thought of talking to any of the banks here until 2018.