This past Monday Apple rolled out the highly anticipated Apple Pay, which has been advertised as “Your wallet. Without the wallet.” You may be wondering exactly how Apply Pay works, and if it is really safe to use…here is what we think:
How does Apple Pay work?
Once your credit or debit card is on file in the Passbook app (which comes with an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus) you are ready to shop. Your iPhone will pop up a “pay with Touch ID” message when its shortwave wireless transceiver is close enough to a card reader at a checkout counter, then all you have to do is enter your Touch ID as if you were unlocking your iPhone.
Check out this demo video by Tech Crunch:
After you load your credit or debit card information to your Apple Pay account, your account information is not actually stored on Apple’s servers, only on your iPhone. So technically the only way someone can use your credit card to make a purchase from your iPhone is if they have the exact same finger print as you.
As a second safety measure, Apple uses a system called, “tokenization” when you add your credit or debit card to your Apple Pay account. Tokenization generates and assigns a random account number to your iPhone, rather than using your actual account number, then when you use Apple Pay to make a purchase that random account number is sent through the store’s system rather than your actual account number. Apple does this to help you avoid becoming a victim of security breaches like the ones at Target and Home Depot. In a sense, Apple Pay is more secure than using a physical credit or debit card.
Apple Pay works with most of the major credit and debit cards from the top U.S. banks, including:
- American Express
- Visa
- Mastercard
- Captal One
- Citi
- Bank of America
- Chase
- Wells Fargo
Apple Pay is currently accepted in over 220,000 stores (find out which ones on Apple’s website).
Monday’s roll out of Apple Pay came along with a few speed bumps (as we all expected). Many Bank of America customers complained that they were double charged for things purchased with Apple Pay. According to cnet.com, Bank of America spokeswoman Tara Burke, “All duplicates will be refunded, we apologize for the inconvenience and are correcting this immediately.” Another issue customers came across was loading their cards to the Passbook app, specifically Citi members, however this was resolved quickly.
Here at SolutionBuilt, we were very excited about the launch of Apple Pay. Not having to using a debit card and risk your account being hacked is a huge bonus!