Rite Aid and CVS Block Apple Pay and Google Wallet 558
An anonymous reader writes CVS and Rite Aid have reportedly shut off the NFC-based contactless payment option at point of sale terminals in thousands of stores. The move will make it impossible to pay for products using Apple Pay or Google Wallet. Rite Aid posted at their stores: "Please note that we do not accept Apple Pay at this time. However we are currently working with a group of large retailers to develop a mobile wallet that allows for mobile payments attached to credit cards and bank accounts directly from a smart phone. We expect to have this feature available in the first half of 2015."
Good luck with that. (Score:5, Insightful)
CurrentC seems way too involved for most people to ever give a shit about.
Re:Good luck with that. (Score:5, Interesting)
Not only that, but it's a huge pile of data mining/theft. They requires direct access to take money from your current account (it bypasses the credit card companies, which is why they want to use it), and it requires access to your health data (for no known reason, but it requires it). Basically, it's a cluster fuck of ID theft.
Re:Good luck with that. (Score:4, Insightful)
Current account? It's your checking account.
There are bad ideas out there but few come close to this one. Allowing retailers the ability to directly deduct money from your checking account is a hackers wet dream.
Re:Good luck with that. (Score:5, Informative)
UK terminology.
Re:Good luck with that. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it's tapping your checking account directly, customers are not going to like this. And to use CurrentC, you have to open up an app on your smartphone and scan a QR code to make the transaction; with NFC, you just bring your phone up to a point near the register until the register recognizes a near-field chip, ready to ring up the sale as soon as you authenticate, which in Apple's case means placing your thumb on your phone's reader. NFC transactions are so fast that customers are going to want them used for everything. There are already vending machines that support it.
Re:Good luck with that. (Score:5, Interesting)
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We have a partially-sortof-almost-similar thing in Denmark - it has transformed into a beast of fuckeduppedness, stupidity, incompetence and security-flaws ...
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and how do these $10 compare to your annual credit card fee?
Re:Good luck with that. (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, post Chip+Pin (and RFID interact flash for that matter) this sort of attack isn't possible. That's because the chip inside the card creates a unique one time approval for the transaction. The approval is un-replayable,
At worst, attack wise, you might be able to perform a turnstile attack on it (Interac flash reader, taped to a turnstile say), but transactions over Interac flash are capped at under 100$ and every 5 transactions you have to re-auth with a full chip and pin, so the banks' risk is pretty limited there.
Disclaimer: I've not done an indepth analysis of the security controls myself. I know there were some weaknesses in the Euro implementation around not signing the list of allowable transaction verification mechanisms or somesuch (look up the blackhat talk if you need to know) but it's a LOT more difficult these days then inserting a skimmer on the terminal and video recording the pin. (Interac was always two factor, until interac flash).
Min
Re:Good luck with that. (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, the QR code is because iPhones didn't come with NFC. And Apple isn't allow app access to NFC yet (most likely because the NFC APIs aren't stable yet, but we can pretend it's to kill bad ideas like CurrenC as well).
The only reason for the fingerprint reader usage is because EMV demands it to access the secure element (Note: iPad Air 2 actually has an NFC chip in it, but no NFC antenna! It's suspected at least part of the secure element is the NFC chip, otherwise why have a completely useless chip htere?).
Apple Pay is just a fancy implementation of the EMV payment spec - it actually doesn't really have much "Apple" to it other than spiffing it up to make it all shiny and usable Apple-style. The spec is from EMV and that dictates how it all works.
Apple doesn't control squat. All Apple Pay is is a virtual credit card implementing the spec with EMV. That's why it works practically everywhere with ZERO retailer involvement - as long as their terminals can do NFC purchases, Apple Pay will work. It does require the payment processor and the banks to have their end of the EMV spec done, which is why it only works with a few banks right now.
This is unlike Google Wallet, which is a payment system like Paypal - Google gets all your transaction information because they need to charge you. In Apple Pay, it's just using another representation of your credit card, which means Apple doesn't get involved in the transaction. It's why Apple Pay gets charged out at Card-Present rates, while Google Wallet only gets Card Not Present (higher fees because higher fraud).
Re:Good luck with that. (Score:5, Informative)
Need, perhaps not. Nevertheless, it is a smart decision to use one. Need to dispute a charge -- with a credit card, you have protections under Federal law. Using a debit card, you have fewer protections. Want to rent a car? Good luck doing that without a credit card. I could go on, but the list is too long.
Bottom line, unless you have very poor impulse control, not having a credit card is a poor financial decision.
Re:Good luck with that. (Score:5, Informative)
In several ways
1)Debit cards don't build credit history. This makes it hard to get a car or house loan at good rates.
2)Credit cards have 0% interest if you pay at the end of the month every month.
3)Debit cards do not earn you interest. If you have an interest checking account (rare, and usually such a low rate that its a joke, sub 1% in most cases), you earn that money regardless of if you have or use a debit card.
4)In the US, many purchases such as hotel, rental car, and gas put a hold on your account for more money than the actual charge. This hold goes away once the car is returned/hotel is checked out/a few days (for gas), but in the meantime that's additional money you can't access.
5)Emergencies/hard times. Sometimes shit happens. You may lose your job and run low on cash. You may have a series of car and house repairs. Its always a good idea to have an additional emergency fun you can call on for short term cash.
6)Your bank may put a hold on your debit card for suspicious activities. In that case, your card is useless. Having a backup is always a good idea. There's been several times this has saved my ass when traveling.
Re:Good luck with that. (Score:5, Insightful)
My bank account is just as protected as my credit cards are, possibly more so.
Not true at all. Credit cards have explicit legal protections for consumers. Also, merchants must go through an approval process before they can charge credit cards. Additionally, you keep your money while the dispute is resolved. If instead, they deduct directly from your bank account, the money is GONE, and it might already be gone from the recipient account, and in the hands of some Nigerian prince, before you even file your dispute. Unlike with a credit card, your bank has no direct financial interest in resolving the dispute.
Read the fine print. (Score:5, Informative)
Except for the fact that when you dispute a transaction on a credit card, the worst thing that happens to you is that your card may be frozen or the line of credit may be reduced by the disputed amount.
When you dispute a check or a debit transaction, your money is gone until the dispute is resolved and the bank may freeze all of your accounts during the investigative process, meaning you may essentially have no access to the money in your checking or savings account for a month or more.
Re:Good luck with that. (Score:4)
Lady enters checkout line with baby on hip and two kids in cart. She's tired of wrangling, wants to leave ASAP.
Apple/Google: Using one hand, pulls phone out of purse, taps, enter pin on phone.
CurrentC: Pull phone out of purse. Unlock phone. Launch CurrentC app. Due to poor cell signal in store, app takes a long time to connect. Enter app pin. Request new transaction. Wait for QR code to show. Explain to the cashier you need them to scan this code. Wait for the second code to appear on Casher's screen. Scan that. Wait some more. Kids screaming murder now. Poor lady begins to cry.
Re:Good luck with that. (Score:5, Insightful)
or...
Credit Card: One hand. Swipe. Finished.
Why does anyone think that it's "more convenient" to use NPC than swiping a credit card?
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Re: Good luck with that. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, that is so much easier. Plus, there's the general liability concern with the transaction being biometric secured versus someone stealing your card. There's obviously some interest in why banks are interested in this detail for sure, hence why they even implemented
Re: Good luck with that. (Score:5, Insightful)
There must be something wrong with me. Not once have I ever purchased something in a store and thought, "Gee, conducting that transaction was incredibly difficult. I wish someone would make an easier way to pay for this bag of groceries than this complex and difficult process of swiping a credit card."
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There must be something wrong with me. Not once have I ever purchased something in a store and thought, "Gee, conducting that transaction was incredibly difficult. I wish someone would make an easier way to pay for this bag of groceries than this complex and difficult process of swiping a credit card."
In the name of progress:
In the beginning people counted out change in chickens and goats, or other favors.
Then came currency, where change was counted out in pennies and dollars.
Then came bank checks, which were convenient, but took time to write out.
Then came credit companies with a mechanical swipe tool in carbon copy. Too slow: add convenient swipe and sign. Gosh, who uses checks, they take forever!?
Finally comes touchless. Precious seconds are saved! No swipe, no sign, no finding a pen - just touch
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Went to London on Saturday. Got off my train, used my NFC credit card to tap onto/off all underground trains. Paid for lunch using NFC. Paid for dinner using Wahaca's app (you can pay and leave without having to wait for bill etc). Also went to the supermarket on Sunday
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Than opening wallet, removing card and swiping it, entering a pin / signing a signature, returning it to your wallet versus just touching a device to a reader and having your device authenticate via your fingerprint / continuous biometrics?
Credit cards must be different where you're from. Here retailers all have contact-less payment terminals. My credit card works through my wallet so the transaction consists purely of taking wallet out of pocket, swipe past the reader, putting wallet back in pocket. From transactions over $100 I have to type a four digit pin which takes all of 1 whole second. Interestingly, my bank has an app which already uses my NFC chip on my phone to perform the exact same transaction. But also lets me withdraw up to $20
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But you need a device out so open purse find phone, swipe, authorize and put away.
Gosh, if only you had something like a watch [apple.com] that could do this...
Re: Good luck with that. (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe in the USA.
In the rest of the world, restaurants have WIFI pay terminals that waitresses can bring to the table for credit card or debit card transactions and all the new ones support NFC as well.
Re:Good luck with that. (Score:4, Interesting)
Your arguments are a little bit nonsense. Why do you have people with credit cards "digging them out of their wallet", but phone users seemingly already having their phones in their hand? Why would I "already have the phone in my hand" unless I'm a teenager?
Seriously, I engage in maybe two transactions with brick and mortar merchants a day. The difference between pulling out a credit card and unlocking my phone, typing in a PIN or futzing with a fingerprint, finding the NFC app (or whatever) is so tiny as t be meaningless. Then on top of it, I would feel foolish paying for something with my phone, because so far, everyone I have ever seen paying for something with a phone looks either a little bit foolish or very foolish.
Being an obedient consumer is very low on my list of priorities. I'm OK with letting the NFC revolution pass me by.
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Not if the transaction is under $50, which is by far the majority of my transactions.
This'll end up in court... (Score:2, Insightful)
I wouldn't be surprised if patents come into it too, and since retailers aren't technology companies, they probably won't have the patents to even develop what they want without licensing, and tech companies with those patents are under no obligation to license them.
Uniform royalty for standard essential patents (Score:2)
tech companies with those patents are under no obligation to license them
I thought that in order for something to be incorporated into an industry standard, patent holders had to offer their essential patents for license under a uniform royalty regime (sometimes called "FRAND").
Patents and standards (Score:2)
There are absolutely no laws that keep standards (or anyone else) safe from patent claims.
Some standards organizations try to require members to license patents under "Reasonable and Non-discriminatory" terms, but the whole thing is nonsense. What is "reasonable"? The answer is, "as much as I can get from you!". And what is non-discrimantory? By definition most RAND terms discriminate against FLOSS, and they also always discriminate against organizations without the patents (since they have to pay fo
Re:This'll end up in court... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why can't the market decide this? Why should this end up in court? We currently have deeply entrenched market dominance by credit card companies. Alternative payment schemes are coming out and attacking that dominance, and that only works if a critical mass of retailers actually stand up to the currently dominant players. If courts intervene, it will lock in the dominance and monopoly profits the credit card companies are extracting. Why do you think that would be a good thing?
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That argument covers Apple Pay as well - I can already pay with contactless technology using both my Visa and MasterCard cards without having to sign up to Google, Apple, PayPal or anyone else, so what do they bring to the table?
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Exactly! We need a new set of companies to dominate the market, to create new and exciting security problems, innovative modes of discrimination and exploitation, and new types of excessive charges. So what if it has a clunky interface, requires always on mobile service (and data charges) and probably creates new efficiencies for remote theft?
Theoretically NFC payment systems should allow greater degrees of consumer control, security measures and ease of use, but lets be realistic here: which software com
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No, I'm saying there should be ONE contactless pay system, not several competing systems. Because if the market decides, you just get the biggest player, not the best system. This was worked out long ago for money, it's not called "legal tender" for nothing; companies aren't free to come up with their own coins and bills. Why should abstractions of coins and bills be any different?
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This isn't the sort of thing that "the market" can decide. I expect that it'll end up in court.
Sure it is. Rite Aid & CVS will shortly discover whether or not their customers who use Apple Pay & Google Wallet are more loyal to them than they are to Apple or Google, and make their adjustments accordingly.
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The market will decide this just fine. By the time CurrentC actually comes to market (likely 12 months late and missing promised features) apple pay will already be deeply engrained and driving traffic to participating retailers. Then, once CurrentC is launched there will be a massive pwnage. Then, the current CurrentC backers will flee, people will get fired, and the system will die. Yes, the market works.
There will be what we end up using (Score:2)
Re: There will be what we end up using (Score:2)
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> Yup, multiple credit cards have been able to survive over the long term.
Yes. And multiple credit cards have also died out and been pushed out of the market.
Although the situation now seems pretty stagnant and has been for awhile. Your lack of awareness for the dead alternatives seems to confirm this.
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> Yup, multiple credit cards have been able to survive over the long term.
Yes. And multiple credit cards have also died out and been pushed out of the market.
...checks UID of jedediah...
OK gramps, just because your JCB card isn't universally accepted, and Golden Corral no longer takes your Diner's Card is no reason to get worked up over newfangled payment systems...
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NFC is not for Apple only. It's a multi-vendor standard.
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No thanks. (Score:5, Insightful)
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The credit card people - where are they in Apple Pay? Are they out and apple pay is between you and apple and apple provides the credit and take the fee? Or is there an extra fee overlaid on the credit card fees that the retailer pays?
These added fees now reach over 4%, which is a lot.
No wonder Rit-aid and CVS are against it.
Re:No thanks. (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple has negotiated a lower fee and banks are agreeable to absorb initial revenue loss in an effort to make NFC a standard.. The fees are needed mostly to pay off credit card fraud and Apple Pay reduces that liability (so the reasoning goes). Rumor has it that the Apple Pay user will be liable for fraud to a much larger degree because it's so hard for the process to be abused.
The competing CurrentC standard, supported by major retailers, kills credit card fees and puts the fraud burden 100% on the consumer. For that reason, retailers favor CurrentC over Apple Pay and Google Wallet, both of which use NFC.
While Google Wallet and Apple Pay are available now, CurrentC is going to be late to the party by about a year.
That delay is what's prompting Rite Aid and CVS (supporters of CurrentC) to pull NFC from their POS.
Re:No thanks. (Score:5, Informative)
Don't be foolish. The laws that govern this have no requirement that a "credit card" be involved. The law is called the Federal Credit Billing Act [FCBA] and it covers any use of interstate consumer credit. The only reason debit cards aren't covered is because credit is never extended, the transaction is a banking transaction that falls under separate banking laws which treat a debit transaction as an electronic check. To avoid the FCBA requirements Apple would be required to essentially act as a bank, which they aren't, and process the transaction as debit cards. This would mean preloading money into the account before you could spend it.
If Apple were stupid enough to attempt what you suggest they would get smacked down so hard they wouldn't stop spinning for a month. The FCBA is incredibly strict and provides guaranteed consumer rights and very harsh penalties for violations including the immediate suspension of business if caught violating it. I sincerely doubt Apple's lawyers are that dumb so this "rumor" your heard is the made up variety that is quite common with Apple.
http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/ar... [ftc.gov]
This should bloody well be common knowledge. The FCBA is the only reason credit cards ever became successful and was a major act of congress that superseded many state laws. It covers pretty much any act of credit except for a few very special exceptions.
Re:No thanks. (Score:4, Informative)
Apple Pay is more secure than a card [mashable.com], since magstripe cards are woefully insecure (read any of the recent POS hacks). It won't release a payment ID until after it reads your fingerprint, and it sends a token with cryptogram instead of the PAN in the clear.
It is not smaller, but it may be easier to use as people switch from swipe to chip and sign in the US.
Re:No thanks. (Score:5, Informative)
since magstripe cards are woefully insecure
In Europe we moved to EMV [wikipedia.org] some 6-9 years ago. It is not without its problems, but cloning cards & other fraud is much harder. A resulting problem is that the banks try to claim that it is 100% secure and so claim that any fraud must be with the knowledge of the card holder- or due to their carelessness.
Re:No thanks. (Score:5, Funny)
Yes but we're Americans. If we pay attention to what works for you then the socialists have won.
Re:No thanks. (Score:5, Informative)
In Europe we moved to EMV some 6-9 years ago. It is not without its problems, but cloning cards & other fraud is much harder.
MasterCard, Visa, Discover and American Express set a USA deadline of October 2015.
After that deadline passes, any merchant who hasn't switched over to a chip & pin/signature setup will be liable for credit card fraud that happens in their stores.
Naturally, no one actually expects 100% compliance by the deadline, so who knows how it will actually shake out.
Keywords: Liability Shift
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Part of the US credit card fee of ~3% or so is to cover fraud. When your banks switched to EMV, did they reduce the fees at all to compensate or are they taking the reduced risk of fraud as profit?
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Yes. Compared to magstripes. But is anyone still using them?
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And a chip is more secure than NFC, which most smart people turned off on their phones within an hour of buying them.
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Think for two seconds. It's called Fraud.
Target data breach. Home Depot data breach. TJ Maxx data breach. And the list goes on forever. I have to replace my credit cards every 12-18 months because of fraud.
The value of Apple Pay, and other tokenization technologies, is that they prevent merchants from ever receiving a credit card number and severely limit the ability for malicious employees or hackers from obtaining raw CC data.
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Its amazing how few European retailers are on that lit of data breaches involving payment data - I wonder why that is, and how we did it without Apple or Google getting involved.
Re:No thanks. (Score:4)
/me recalls hearing about something called "single point of failure"...
Re:No thanks. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Your credit cards don't stop working when your phone does. There is no single point of failure. You just have to go get your cards, for your hypothetical failure.
Uh...yeah. What if your cards are at home and you're 300 miles away with only enough gas in your tank to drive for 200 miles?
It's a worthwhile point. You're putting all of this on your phone. So you're out with friends at a bar and you accidentally spill a beer on your phone. Bzzt! One shorted out phone! Well, let's hope the people at the bar won't mind if you leave your tab open while you go home and get your credit cards. I'm sure they'll trust you to come back and settle your tab.
There's also the
This is a special kind of stupid. (Score:3)
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CVS is giving up less than 2% of it's total sales by dropping tobacco while they are growing sales overall by 10+% a year.
It does not have a significant effect on their corporation.
Good luck with that. (Score:5, Interesting)
And worse than simply not accepting it, they did so because they plan to come up with their own competing product??? WTF, Rite Aid, do you really think people will rush to use yet another crappy store-specific solution, rather than look confused at the cashier for a few seconds before walking away, leaving their stuff at the register?
Re:Good luck with that. (Score:4)
How does this not violate these stores' agreements with Visa (etc), which have explicitly partnered with Apple and Google to provide Pay and Wallet as a valid method of using their (virtual) cards at the register?
Because their agreement is to accept credit cards issued by Visa/Mastercard? What makes Apple Pay more secure and private is you're literally not giving the store your card (information) in any form. It's more like Paypal -- you give Apple Pay permission to disperse the fund from your Visa/MC to the retailer, And Apple Pay is using a one-time payment code so you can't just make a nice little list of purchases by a customer from the number being given over and over.
I don't know why CVS or Rite Aid would be so bent out of shape about this. Don't all drugstores nowadays have Loyalty Cards programs in place? Even if you don't have a credit card account number to use the customer is willingly giving them personally identifiable info to link their purchased items to.
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The only thing they are not allowed to do is to decline to accept legal tender. I.e. they legally aren't allowed to reject a $100 if it is a genuine bill, regardless of what store policy is.
This is false.
This article is only tangentially related to your claim, but it explicity addresses your particular variation.
http://www.snopes.com/business... [snopes.com]
"private businesses are still free to specify which forms of legal tender they will accept. If a shop doesn't want to take any currency larger than $20 bills, or the
keep in mind... (Score:2)
The reason they are doing this is that they don't want to keep paying inflated fees to credit card companies because they are tired of getting screwed. They may also not be serious about it; it may simply be a pressure tactic to get credit card companies to lower fees "or else".
Getting payment options other than the big credit card companies and their inflated fees necessarily involves inconvenience. Obviously, consumers are too lazy to do it by themselves, but retailers may have enough power to make this h
DOA due to Liability shift to consumer... (Score:5, Insightful)
It appears that CurrentC moves liability exposure almost entirely onto the consumer, whereas Visa limits consumer exposure to $50 that most banks waive in actual fraud. Add full access to your bank account to make the worst-case liability exposure whatever you have in your account, and privacy terms that allow them to use health related data that could have been protected under HIPPA. Tell me again why I would want to use this?
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That's huge: in the UK the banks were temporarily able to do that by claiming chip-and-pin cards were secure (boy, was that not true). The courts threw it out, as you might imagine, but only after lots of people were defrauded.
In Canada, the banks are on the hook, and have refunded me both times their "unhackable" pin-and-chip card got hacked. We and the US are looking at card-and-signature systems, which have good customer protection as humans can verify claimed forgeries, just like cheques.
Re:DOA due to Liability shift to consumer... (Score:5, Insightful)
They are two sides of the same coin. One shifts liability from the merchants to the consumer, the other shifts liability from the consumer to the merchants.
If we really want security in the electronic transaction system, liability has fall upon the organization(s) operating the transaction system - Visa, the banks, etc. If they don't pay a financial cost for fraud, they have no incentive to improve the system to prevent fraud. Penalizing consumers just drives them to use cash. Penalizing merchants just drives them to stop accepting cards and electronic payment. It's only when you penalize the folks who control the electronic transaction systems that you'll see improvements to said system.
Re:DOA due to Liability shift to consumer... (Score:4, Interesting)
But then, someone who talks about HIPAA and doesn't know how to spell it, obviously doesn't know what they are talking about, but isn't afraid to post like they do, confusing others.
I don't blame the retailers (Score:2)
There are a lot of hidden costs associated with using cards and other technologies with payment terminals. When you pay $6.00 for your purchase, the retailer doesn't get all that money.The processing company that processes all the transactions paid for with cards at a retailer gets a cut of every transaction. If it is a credit card, like Visa or MC, then the credit card company also takes a small percentage.
While Google Wallet and Apply Pay may be free to the end-user, I highly doubt that it is free for the
Re:I don't blame the retailers (Score:5, Interesting)
While Google Wallet and Apply Pay may be free to the end-user, I highly doubt that it is free for the retailer.
Apple doesn't get a penny from the end user or from the retailer, so I suppose Google doesn't either. With Apple Pay the retailer pays the lowest rate available (percentages depend on how secure the payment method is; the more secure, the cheaper for the merchant). Apple gets some money from the bank; the bank saves money by having less fraud.
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http://www.iphonehacks.com/201... [iphonehacks.com]
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So they're doing this out of the goodness of their corporate heart?
If you believe this, then I have a bridge to sell ya'.
The customer is wrong, wrong, wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
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You MUST be new here.
Gruber at DaringFireball nails it (Score:4, Informative)
Gruber at DaringFireball nails it: [daringfireball.net]
Apple's great strategic advantages over Google, is that they put their customers (i.e. the people who buy Apple's goods and services) needs over their partners needs to be able to data mine those users.
Re:Gruber at DaringFireball nails it (Score:5, Interesting)
You realise Google Wallet is pretty much the same. Unlock your phone, touch the pad. No data handed over, one time code that can't be reused so cloning is pointless.
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Pretty much doesn't cut it. With Google wallet you need to unlock your phone (entering that pin) and then potentially enter the Google wallet pin to authorize the transaction. So two pins versus none. Google wallet hasn't taken off because it's more hassle than using a credit card, which was the point.
Re:Gruber at DaringFireball nails it (Score:4, Informative)
You don't need two PINs. In fact you don't need a PIN at all in some situations. It's up to you, you can configure it how you like. I use it often, it's very easy and quick.
Google Wallet has some other advantages. You don't have to pay with a credit or debit card, you can use the balance from your Wallet. You can control the balance available to spend that way, and it prevents purchases being reported to the bank.
Re:Gruber at DaringFireball nails it (Score:5, Insightful)
Google knows only one thing more than Apple does - the value of your purchase. Apple knows which store you went to and when you paid (you are using their hardware; yes, they know). If you're paranoid enough to worry about the difference, you're probably paranoid enough to know that the Bank is tracking your purchase and selling your information on the open market and you should be paying with cash.
I'll say this, though - these merchants are NEVER getting a direct connection to my bank account. To me, Visa/MC/Amex's role is to buffer me from fraud and abuse. I realize that the merchants chafe over rates, swipe fees, and liability (I do to), but they seem to care very little about security and I really don't want their hand in my till.
Target, KMart, and WalMart (Score:4, Informative)
There is absolutely no good reason for this. (Score:5, Insightful)
Overwhelm them with complaints. Use these links (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.cvs.com/help/email-... [cvs.com]
Here's the message I sent. If you're lazy, feel free to use it:
Disabling Apple Pay and Google Wallet, which were previously accepted is not OK. If you want to come up with your own competing system and give people rewards to use it, that's fine, but don't break existing functionality. Google Wallet just works. Apple and Google's solutions don't cost you any more money than a credit card transaction. Your payment app isn't even available yet and relies on QR codes, which means that when it does launch it will likely be very clunky by comparison.
If you can't come up with a sane response to this, I guess I'll be switching to Walgreens.
No incentive = why would they want it anyway? (Score:3)
Why would CVS or RiteAid want Apple Pay anyway? If a shopper has bothered to come to the store, select items to buy and then go checkout, chances are they want the items relatively more than someone who hasn't gone to that effort. The stores of course support several different existing methods of payment which work just fine from their perspective. The customer is likely to pay anyway.
Perfect? No. There are middlemen involved in the transaction but it's a system everyone more or less tolerates. Extremely complicated financial deals are behind every card terminal you see in a store. None of that stuff just happens. It's all very carefully planned.
Along comes Apple which puts themselves into play as yet another layer of middlemen, one which the stores have zero control over and one which is outside their established payment process. It also runs counter to their own payment initiative which they have agreed to support exclusively. So what Apple tried to do was an end-run around the established players AND they did it using the existing installed card terminals. NOBODY piggybacks like Apple tried to do without having some major skin in the game. You try stunts like that, you are going to get your hand burned.
So, Apple is at once both another layer of middlemen interference and also potentially a contract issue for the other payment product. Apple was too late to the game. And from the store's perspective again, you have a cart full of stuff, you aren't going to just walk away, you'll probably pay with another method so they have nothing to lose really buy rejecting Apple Pay. Same for GooglePay which I never saw in the wild. Whatever.
Apple has a habit of intruding on entrenched turf and taking on the existing players. They did it with phones. But payment systems are a much more spread out target where everyone has their own idea of what they want and most of them think it works just fine as is, including the customers. Nobody who mattered much was asking for NFC payments. Apple has been pushing this, suddenly, so it's up to Apple to tell everyone why they should want it. It's totally on them. Until they do that, until they make some inroads at the card terminal issuers, Apple Pay is going to be limited.
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Re:Good for them (Score:5, Informative)
What magstripe? I live in Europe, where we dropped that nonsense in favour of chip+PIN years ago.
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No data travels to or from the card unless I put it in the card reader, or the salesperson does so under my watchful eye.
NFC should be renamed NAG: No Air Gap.
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Absolutely. NFC was the first thing I turned off. Like the "Internet of Things", NFC is one of those things that for me are solutions without problems.
I've got ninety-nine problems, and one of them ain't that it's too hard to make a purchase in a store.
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Apparently you are intimidated by complete sentences. There's a cure for that problem: Learn how to do it right. Then people will understand you better, and you'll no longer have to try to hide your ignorance behind "I know what I meant and you're an idiot if you can't read my mind".
Perhaps His Holiness is old enough to have learnt about something called "The Law Of Unintended Consequences". This often seems to crop up in conjunction with the implementation of Solutions Without Problems. You should read up
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Face it, as far as these companies are concerned, you guys are even less relevant than transexual credit card wielding jihadists. They don't care about you. You're a rumor, recognizable only as deja vu and dismissed just as quickly. You don't exist; you were never even born. Anonymity is your name. Silence your native tongue. You're no longer part of the System ...
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No they are not members of MIB..
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Because when I got my new phone, NFC was turned on by default, which drains the battery and creates a potential security hole.
Most people do not use NFC. I don't think the company from whom I buy a phone should be engaging in social engineering to use something I do not want to use.
Honestly, if the feature was there and turned off unless I wanted it, it wouldn't matter to me. As long as we don't go to a cashless society, it doesn't matter to
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Eliza: You seem angry. Would you like to talk about your mother?
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A CVS fanboi?
If this isn't a poster child for the 'long tail of the Internet' I don't know what is.
Re:I'm waiting to see who gets compromised first. (Score:5, Informative)
Apple never stores your credit card. You enter your credit card into the phone, it is sent to the credit card issuer and the credit card issuer sends one time use tokens directly to your phone. Those one time use tokens can only be used by authenticating with your fingerprint.
Re:I'm waiting to see who gets compromised first. (Score:4, Insightful)
One hack can compromise the credit cards for MILLIONS of people.
"Hacking your wallet" requires a particular person to target you specifically and physically.
In order to do as much damage as a single credit card breach can, everyone in New York City would have to be the victim of a pickpocket at the same time. The great thing about computing is automation. You can fuck up on a grand scale really quickly and really easily.