Apple Pay

Couple of days ago I was watching a documentary on the Apple’s latest move, The Apple Pay from  Apple & I'm so pleased to write about it.

In actual sense, what is Apple Pay & How can it benefit you?

Apple Pay is a mobile payment and digital wallet service by Apple Inc. that lets users make payments using the some of the iDevices which are iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, Apple Watch-compatible devices (iPhone 5 and later models), iPad Air 2, and also the iPad Mini 3.

One of the good sides of Apple Pay is that it does not require Apple-specific contactless payment terminals and will work with Visa's PayWave, MasterCard's PayPass, and American Express's ExpressPay terminals.

The official launching of the Apple Pay was held earlier this week with the release of iOS 8.1, many rushed to local participating retailers to be among the first to use their iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus as a mobile wallet. Early reviews peg it as easy to use and incredibly convenient.

But before we herald it as the future of mobile payments — requiring just a tap of your thumb at checkout to pay for items — But one major question in this has been; is it secure to use? Considering, some occurrences of data breaches which had occurred. Just this month, contact information of 76 million households was compromised in a cyberattack on JP Morgan Chase, and we're all too familiar with the heavily publicized breaches, aimed specifically at credit cards, at Target and Home Depot. A Twitter feed was broadcasted by CNN, reporting a double-charged on a user's account via Apple Pay.

Despite worries about someone stealing your phone or it being susceptible to hackers, experts say Apple Pay actually adds significant security to your payment transactions, even more than traditional credit cards. And that really a node to hold to!

To start, Apple Pay uses near-field communication(NFC) technology to allow iPhone 6 and 6 Plus owners to pay for items by holding their phones in front of payment terminals. It uses a variety of security measures to protect your payment data, such as the usage of your token, authentication via fingerprint and a secure method for storing the data.

The 'Token' Payments

The payment platform was made as a substitute instead of transferring your credit-card information with each transaction, Apple Pay uses a stand-in "token" that's exchanged between your iOS device and the point-of-sale terminal. It's essentially a surrogate for the actual number.

The token works with another security measure called a cryptogram, a number generated specifically for the transaction (these numbers are generated at various intervals as your access your token). The cryptogram uniquely identifies your device to make sure the transaction isn't fraudulent.

Think of it as your iOS device sharing a code word with the payment terminal. That way, even if someone happens to listen in on that word, it's useless on its own.

Andrew Sudbury, co-founder of Abine, a company that designs tools to protect online privacy said: "It wouldn't matter if they write it on a billboard." 

Apple is far from the first company to use token payments — security experts have been pushing for a widespread adoption of token payments for years, Sudbury said.

As reported by Mashable.

Touch ID

The Apple Pay transactions work with the iPhones' Touch ID fingerprint sensors in order to authenticate purchases. And in order to complete a transaction, users need to put their fingerprint on the device's sensor to verify they are who they say they are.

James Anderson, MasterCard's senior vice president for mobile product development, told Mashable that those three elements are supposed to work together: the token number, the cryptogram and your fingerprint. Your fingerprint acts as the go-ahead for the other two elements. MasterCard is one of the early adopters of Apple Pay and is making it easy for customers to understand how it works and know where to find retailers nearby that accept the payment option. It recently launched an app called MasterCard Nearby that addresses those questions.

It remains to be seen how widespread of an impact Apple Pay will eventually have, especially since it's currently only available to people with the latest versions of the iPhone. As of now,

Apple Pay is only usable at 220,000 merchant locations in the U.S., just 2% of the country's 12-15 million retailers that accept cards, according to Consumer Reports.

Apple Pay is still just getting its footing as it launches into the market. Some have already reported that they've been charged twice while using Apple Pay.

Well, Apple Pay isn't perfect, and it will be  too soon to tag up failure/insecurity with it. It's a thing that has the possibility of changing the mode of mobile payments in the world.

Apple Pay could be the long-awaited agent that powers that change.

If you’re running it, get the best out of it.

If you’ve used it, do please share your experience with us. Thank you.