[HN Gopher] Apple unveils contactless payments via Tap to Pay on...
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Apple unveils contactless payments via Tap to Pay on iPhone
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 696 points
Date : 2022-02-08 15:03 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.apple.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.apple.com)
| Pxtl wrote:
| Tangentially related, I'm still surprised how few low-end Android
| phones have NFC. Like, the Moto G line is _everywhere_ and they
| still don 't have that?
| frb wrote:
| > Apple will work closely with leading payment platforms and app
| developers across the payments and commerce industry to offer Tap
| to Pay on iPhone to millions of merchants in the US.
|
| Is it just me feeling that Apple is again playing gatekeeper to
| iPhone APIs and hindering true competition by "working with
| leading platforms" aka. the big players, like Stripe or PayPal,
| essentially leaving startups and smaller players disadvantaged.
|
| Why not just finally open the NFC API?
| dagmx wrote:
| They do that when they're concerned about bad actors or want to
| prove out the API first with a controlled set of people who are
| willing to experience breakage
| frb wrote:
| Isn't that what the AppStore review process is for?
|
| Or why not provide an extra approval process for the NFC API?
|
| On the other hand they were not so concerned with bad actors
| when releasing AirTags.
|
| Feels more that it's about control than safety and like that
| kind of decision that got them into all the antitrust probes
| in the first place.
| dagmx wrote:
| App store review can only catch so much, and isn't able to
| analyze the actual code. It's one way for them to gate
| malicious code.
|
| And providing extra approval process for the NFC API is
| exactly what they're doing here.
|
| AirTags actually have a lot of design in them to thwart bad
| actors so your comment there is incorrect or ignoring all
| the anti stalker measures in there.
| ab_testing wrote:
| So, is Apple -> Stripe now ?
| samwillis wrote:
| I'm so pleased to see this happen in a way where its not tied to
| Apples own payment processor. They could so easily have done that
| to capture more revenue but I suspect it would have opened up
| more chance of an anticompetitive lawsuit.
|
| Obviously they are going to vet which processors are allowed, but
| as a consumer you want that so you can be confident that the
| iPhone you are tapping your card against isn't skimming your
| account.
|
| I suspect there is a revenue agreement with the processors
| allowed on.
| jb1991 wrote:
| *allowed
| samwillis wrote:
| Thanks, fixed.
| thebean11 wrote:
| Protection against account skimming should happen on the
| customer's iPhone (it should only send data allowing a single
| transaction of a certain size) not the merchant's iPhone. If
| the customer's iPhone doesn't have that protection it's pretty
| easy for the merchant to hide a skimmer in their iPhone case /
| POS system / gas pump.
| samwillis wrote:
| It looks like it's not just Apple Pay, it's excepts any card
| payment, the protection has to be on the merchant's iPhone.
| h0nd wrote:
| I think it only allows contactless payments. No matter if
| from a card or phone or whatever that is equipped with NFC
| payments that is compatible with the merchant app.
| thebean11 wrote:
| I don't think tap to pay can be skimmed in the same way you
| can with swiping. You'd have to actually clone the data on
| the NFC chip, which isn't possible through a tap from what
| I understand.
| samwillis wrote:
| I believe it's possible to perform a MITM attack on
| contactless cards.
|
| From a quick google:
| https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9220841
|
| I do also remember reading about researchers at Cambridge
| University who were looking at this maybe 7-8 years ago.
| thebean11 wrote:
| Interesting! Wasn't aware of that. Is this something
| that's being actively exploited in the wild though? It
| won't let me read the actual paper so it's hard for me to
| tell how practical the attack is.
| alimov wrote:
| Impractical things have a tendency to become practical
| when enough money is involved:)
| judge2020 wrote:
| There's also this:
|
| https://youtu.be/YmJ4ULncNwg //
| https://i.blackhat.com/asia-20/Thursday/asia-20-Galloway-
| Fir...
| djrogers wrote:
| It'd be trivial for a rogue payment app to display one $
| amount on the screen yet deduct another.
| minitoar wrote:
| Presumably these apps will be heavily locked down and
| reviewed by Apple to mitigate this. Could also imagine
| iOS ux to help here (obviously could still be phished).
| samwillis wrote:
| I suspect that Apple will have full control of the
| screen, like Apple Pay. Your POS app will call an
| apple+(stripe/other) api which will show the payment
| screen and enable the NFC hardware.
|
| There will be no way of an app to display a fake payment
| screen in front of the real one, or accessing the NFT
| apis themselves. It's clearly one of the key reasons why
| Apple have not opened up the NFC hardware for outside
| developers.
| pimterry wrote:
| This risk also applies to any card terminal where you pay
| contactlessly. In Europe, that effectively means every
| card terminal everywhere and a comfortable majority of
| card transactions
| (https://www.mastercard.com/news/europe/en-
| uk/newsroom/press-... says 75% of mastercard transactions
| in Europe are contactless).
|
| The main protections against this are maximum limits for
| unverified contactless purchases (about EUR50, depending
| on the country) and banks outright guaranteeing customers
| against fraud (https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/cons
| umers/financial-pr...).
|
| No idea how that can translate directly onto phone-based
| terminals though. On cards, the extra-validation backup
| for suspicious/over the daily limit transactions is that
| the contactless machine asks you for your pin, but
| there's no way anybody should be typing their card pin
| into a random stranger's iPhone.
| thetinguy wrote:
| AFAIK there are no contactless limits in the US. Also
| usually no pins on credit cards in the US only debit
| cards.
| judge2020 wrote:
| There are still attacks, eg. contactless purchase limits
| can be bypassed by simply telling the terminal "of course
| I am a CDCVM device, let me use the higher transaction
| limits":
|
| (page 18, with pages 10 and 12 showing the Visa/MC
| limits)
| https://i.blackhat.com/asia-20/Thursday/asia-20-Galloway-
| Fir...
| avianlyric wrote:
| Sure but that's something card networks already deal with
| via chargebacks. If merchants get caught doing that,
| they'll have their payment processor, the processors
| acquirer and Mastercard/Visa all over them like a bad
| rash.
|
| You can guarantee that the merchants collateral, or any
| unpaid funds will be taken and used to automatically
| refund anyone that went near their readers, and if the
| money can't be claimed from the merchant, then the
| payment processor or acquirer will be forced to cough up.
|
| All the card networks take this type of fraud very
| seriously. They understand that they only get to keep
| their very lucrative positions in this world if people
| 100% trust card readers to not rip them off, and to get
| easy compensation if they do. So they come down hard on
| businesses that threaten that trust.
| CraigRood wrote:
| Exactly, there's nothing really new here except the
| device being used. Risk to skimming with a phone is no
| different than a 3G enabled terminal. Ultimately you need
| a business account and legal agreements with a merchant -
| so in this case Stripe to start work and accepting
| payments.
| thebean11 wrote:
| Display the $ amount on which device though? If you want
| to be secure, you display it on the customer's iPhone and
| have them confirm.
|
| Either way though, this is different from skimming.
| Skimming allows the skimmer to make future transactions
| which is much much worse.
| nmstoker wrote:
| Absolutely agree, it ought to be displayed and then
| consented to based on that knowledge.
|
| Right now with most contactless in shops in the UK you're
| left thinking "did they key that amount in right?" and if
| you're paranoid you ask for a receipt (from the machine,
| although merchants often drag their feet or try to give
| you one from the till not the reader!) and/or you check
| on the phone afterwards (which would be a pain if it
| showed an issue because by then it's a bit late!)
| [deleted]
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| If they can assume connectivity it would be best to invert
| the flow and instead make the Customer receive an invoice ID
| from the NFC, then work directly with Apple servers to
| actually pay. Then the Business gets a push notification the
| invoice was paid.
|
| That way the customer phone never actually sends anything
| directly to the business, and the only thing sent to the
| customer is basically public (sure, pay my invoice if you
| want...)
|
| Skimming happens because you have to enter trusted things
| into _their_ device w/o any authentication mechanism for the
| device you're interacting with (the pump).
| jhatax wrote:
| They are going to accept payments from contactless credit
| cards as well, so connectivity isn't assumed. If it could
| be, the flow you describe is brilliant.
| billylo wrote:
| I hope this would mean CoreNFC will no longer block payment
| application id tags.
|
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corenfc
| gernb wrote:
| When do they announce they want 30% of all payments made with
| this system?
| duxup wrote:
| Kinda weird.
|
| If a rando retail person pulls out their iPhone and asks me to
| tap... that's kinda strange in my mind. Something about "how do I
| know that isn't their personal phone?" would pop in my head.
|
| But things that seem awkward can become commonplace.
| wil421 wrote:
| I pay for house cleaning via Venmo. I've also paid for some
| other work via Venmo including landscaping, tree service, and
| HVAC work. It's all from small business owners who use their
| personal phones.
| tantalor wrote:
| > how do I know that isn't their personal phone?
|
| Why would that be a concern to you?
|
| Either way you pay, get receipt, take your goods, and leave.
| It's not like you are stealing.
|
| Are you worried the clerk would MITM your payment and leave you
| without normal return/refund policy, since it wasn't a legit
| transaction?
| jedberg wrote:
| If a random disheveled looking person comes up to you in the
| middle of a store and says "I can take your cash and give you
| a receipt", and they they show you a legit looking receipt,
| do you feel that it would be ok to give them money and take
| the receipt?
|
| Sure, it's the store's job to make sure people aren't
| impersonating their employees and stealing their receipt
| papers, so that's on them right?
| syspec wrote:
| That's exactly what they do at the Apple store, and they
| don't seem to be hurting for business
| jedberg wrote:
| I never said the would be hurting for business, so I'm
| not sure how that's relevant.
|
| That being said, the Apple store has security guards up
| front and it's generally a pretty small space where
| someone faking it would be noticed.
| [deleted]
| duxup wrote:
| I'm less concerned about anything complex and more about just
| paying the right folks.
| tantalor wrote:
| That's literally the job of the clerk, not you.
| jedberg wrote:
| As someone who lives in a society, I'd say it's both the
| store and the customer's job to make sure the right
| people get paid.
| tantalor wrote:
| The clerk _is_ the store. Your obligation ends when the
| clerk has the money.
| jedberg wrote:
| But how do you know the clerk works for the store? You
| don't feel at all obligated to make sure they are
| _actually_ the store?
| jhatax wrote:
| From the way you are describing this, you seem
| distrustful of someone who walks up to you with a device,
| scans a barcode, shows you the price of said item which
| matches the tag in your hand, prints a receipt, accepts a
| tap as payment, let's you walk away with said item.
|
| This flow summarizes almost every transaction I have had
| at Banana Republic, Gap, and the Apple Store, to name a
| few retailers. I have not had reason to distrust the
| clerk, disheveled or otherwise. Once I receive a
| notification from my credit card that an entity with the
| same name as the store has posted a transaction to my
| card, I walk out the door with my purchase. I have not
| once thought (or cared) about the store receiving the
| money once I am out the door.
|
| What's the reason for the distrust?
| jedberg wrote:
| My default is to distrust someone with nothing but what
| looks like a personal phone, until I'm sufficiently
| convinced that they are in fact who they say they are.
|
| In every experience you describe, the device they use is
| not just a standard iPhone. It usually has a special case
| with a card scanner and reciept printer for starters. At
| the Apple store they wear apple badges and have branded
| clothing. I haven't been to the Gap in a long time, but
| I'm guessing they have some sort of way of identifying
| themselves. You even said yourself you wait for the
| notification that you were charged by the right entity
| name, which is another clue that you made a legit
| purchase.
|
| I have no problem making my purchase from someone with
| nothing more than an iPhone, as long as there are other
| clues that they actually work there. But I do feel it is
| my responsibility as a member of society to at least
| attempt to verify their veracity.
| tantalor wrote:
| I love the idea of some scammer setting up a fake POS in
| a store and checking out customers. They would probably
| try to blend in with the real staff and use legit looking
| gear.
|
| - Our inventory system went down so I have to type in
| your total
|
| - All set, it just automatically e-mails you the receipt
|
| - (Who are you?) Corporate sent me, I'm in a different
| store everyday
|
| This has probably been done before.
| llampx wrote:
| Even now, they can use a Square wireless terminal and you
| wouldn't know if its hooked up to their personal iPhone or
| what.
| duxup wrote:
| Absolutely true.... just seems like a mounted device like
| they usually are seem more 'official'.
| djrogers wrote:
| Square and similar terminals aren't mounted anymore - the
| vast majority I see these days are wireless wedges that use
| Bluetooth or some other wireless protocol.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| There's a big difference between something that looks
| like a payment terminal and what appears to just be a
| personal mobile phone though.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I have to say this is the worst scam someone could consider
| pulling. Payment processors (of which you will need one to use
| this) do KYC and it wouldn't take long at all to get caught and
| tracked back to whoever is doing it.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| I tend to imagine most users of this feature will be individual
| owner-operators such as a seller at a farmer's market, so the
| distinction between their personal phone and a business POS
| terminal may be fuzzy to start with.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| I was working for a company that was working on this sort of
| device a couple years ago and that was definitely the feedback
| we received in early UX trials.
| aloe_falsa wrote:
| When I pay with cash, I don't usually worry that the
| salesperson will put it in their own pocket. If they choose to
| be dishonest, that's between them and their employer.
| zjaffee wrote:
| The prime example I can think of where this makes sense is if
| you're going to get a haircut, it allows the barber to not need
| to buy a square attachment for the iphone they already have.
| vmception wrote:
| why does that question matter, at all?
|
| The Apple system is not set up to skim either way, and if they
| have a good or service you want, just go through the motions.
| This is as secure as it gets.
| parkingrift wrote:
| People use their personal phones with Stripe, Square, and
| Venmo. The only difference here is the lack of a terminal. It's
| ultimately processed the same way.
| bentcorner wrote:
| I agree - you'd hope that retailers would use cases or
| accessories that say "this is not a personal phone". I think
| I've seen employees at big retailers like Best Buy carry around
| devices that look like smartphones but have ergonomics more
| suited for retail (large black cases, belt holsters, attached
| receipt printer, etc.).
|
| Like a work uniform, it doesn't really serve any immediate
| purpose but it gives the transaction authenticity.
| duxup wrote:
| Yeah even a funky case would kinda change that perception I
| think.
| joshstrange wrote:
| This is really freaking cool and a long time coming. It's sad
| that iPads are left out since those are the primary POS device
| that stores use (off the shelf device at least) but I look
| forward to testing this out when they release it. I need to
| support swipe/dip so I'll have to stick with my BTLE device for
| that but this would be cool addition to have contactless-only
| checkout stations manned by people with iPhones.
| prepend wrote:
| This will be nice.
|
| A few months ago a street vendor was selling a book he had
| written. He seemed like a nice guy and I wanted to support his
| initiative. The book was only $10.
|
| He didn't take cash, nor Venmo, nor PayPal. He took cash app,
| Apple Pay and a bunch of other things I had never heard of. I
| don't use cash app and wouldn't sign up just for him.
|
| We tried to use Apple Pay but couldn't figure out how to add his
| contact info and send money. I'm sure we could have eventually
| figured it out, but we gave up. He also had an android phone with
| some apps there but couldn't work with my iPhone.
|
| This sounds like it would have been really useful. I'll settle
| with "just give $10 to this person who has an iPhone, I don't
| care about anything else" as a step closer to "just give $10 to
| this person who has anything"
| eole666 wrote:
| Outside of USA, where most people don't have an iPhone, I don't
| really see the point.. It would be more usefull with ipads or any
| less personal device : If the shop's owner haves an iPhone
| accepting paiement but it's an employee doing the paiements, the
| shop opwner has to give his personal phone to the employee to
| accept paiement ? Or he needs to buy an other iPhone with no
| personal data and accepting paiement (is it even possible ? ) to
| give the employee ? .. and now it's already more expensive than a
| simple contactless paiement machine.
| noneeeed wrote:
| Lots of people other than shops take money. There are lots of
| one-man businesses or tradespeople who take credit card through
| services like SumUp which require a seperate device paired to
| their phone. For people like that this will be very useful.
|
| Both my plumber and the guy who fixed our washing machine used
| SumUp, as did most of the market-stall holders at the Christmas
| market this year. All of them were using the phone-linked
| version (rather than the one with its own SIM).
|
| Sure, it's not right for everyone, but it will be perfect for a
| lot of people.
| clintonb wrote:
| > Later this year, US merchants will be able to accept Apple
| Pay and other contactless payments simply by using iPhone and a
| partner-enabled iOS app
|
| The target user is a US-based merchant. Most likely, it's a
| small business, perhaps a sole proprietorship, that uses a
| small Square reader today. This gives that business one more
| way to accept payments, but without the extra hardware.
|
| A business with multiple employees/points of sale has
| alternatives. This is probably not the solution for them.
| aetherspawn wrote:
| This is such a big deal because for small merchants, these
| terminals are generally really expensive and take high cuts.
|
| Now small cafes, tradies, etc getting on their feet can use the
| hardware they already have to start processing straight away.
| barkerja wrote:
| Does the use of a terminal tack on more fees in addition to the
| fees the processor already takes?
| aetherspawn wrote:
| In a lot of cases the processor is not the bank (SmartPay,
| Square, etc), so usually, yes, they'll want a cut. And then
| you'll also get charged for the paper rolls (for receipts),
| and renting of the EFTPOS equipment if you rent it.
|
| I ripped this off some marketing material that I found for a
| popular EFTPOS terminal in Australia:
|
| A merchant service fee is a fee you pay to your EFTPOS
| provider to process your transaction payments. This fee is
| calculated as a percentage (or fixed fee) of every
| transaction where a customer swipes, inserts, or taps their
| card at your terminal.
|
| For every transaction, your bank pays fees which include: a
| fee to the issuing bank (e.g. the bank that issued the card),
| the scheme fee (e.g. Visa, Mastercard, EFTPOS), and the
| switch fee (who processes the transaction).
| dustinmoris wrote:
| Oh no, now Epic will get upset because they won't be able to plug
| in an external USB 2.0 CC reader into an iPhone.
| aplummer wrote:
| As an aside, if anyone knows why Australia has 100% contactless
| payment penetration I'd be interested to know
| [deleted]
| steadyready wrote:
| Man, I swear sometimes I feel like I'm on a forum full of wanted
| criminals, state actors, and/or felons.
|
| I'm not saying I'm against privacy. I am all for not being
| tracked, but we are approaching absurdity.
|
| I really want to see all of you who praise "privacy" go fully
| offline and use only cash. No cards. No bank account. Nothing.
| Salary? Cash, because earnings could also be sold and used for
| advertising. Groceries? Cash. Gas? Cash. No checks also, as they
| can be tracked /s Also, while we are at it, no Android, no iOS,
| no Windows or Macs. Only Linux, because we can't trust UE
| vendors.
|
| Really, maybe we should start spending our energy in convincing
| legislators that PII should not be sold along with transaction
| data/histories. Matter a fact, let's rally for universal privacy
| laws. How about that?
|
| Let's not go 50 back in evolution just because "visa bad". I'm
| happy not to lose cash or reach for my wallet anymore.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| How do you go from 'Apple is offering a new payment method' to
| a rant about how you don't care about privacy?
|
| Why would people have to choose between using only cash and
| sharing their data with everyone? The normal thing to do is
| limit who can access the data as much as possible. And if
| people don't do that, why would legislators care?
| steadyready wrote:
| > "How do you go from 'Apple is offering a new payment
| method' to a rant about how you don't care about privacy?"
|
| Because some other people started ranting about cashless
| payments, payment processors and their privacy.
|
| > "Why would people have to choose between using only cash
| and sharing their data with everyone?"
|
| Because that's how other people put it. I was just raising
| the point that we shouldn't have to give up QoL improvements,
| instead push for more privacy-focused laws, like limiting
| PII-data being sold along with transaction histories.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Apart from your comment and its replies there's only one
| other conversation containing the word 'privacy' and its
| about how people want to be able to use cash so the credit
| card company can't see all of your purchases. Doesn't sound
| too unreasonable to me (nor does that appear to me to be
| limiting you in any way) and I don't quite understand why
| you didn't reply to them instead of posting an apparently
| 'opposite' rant.
| glial wrote:
| Agreed. I'm all for privacy too. But trying to solve social
| problems with technical solutions seems optimistic at best.
| Even if everyone on this website uses cash only, the issue of
| data privacy still exists for the other 99.999% of society -
| and we should try to solve it for them too.
| Santosh83 wrote:
| Cash decentralises power to the extent possible. E-currency
| centralises it to an absurd degree. That's the point. The slope
| of convenience though is gradual and slippery indeed.
| Institutions we've had for centuries crumbling in a matter of
| decades is a matter of concern. They worked more or less. There
| is no guarantee what is replacing them will work but we seem to
| have blind faith they will, since we're throwing the baby & the
| bathwater very gleefully out the window.
| steadyready wrote:
| I never said "remove cash". It should continue to exist
| nevertheless, because it's a level of system redundancy and
| backup. I just said that I shouldn't have to sacrifice
| quality of life improvements and STILL have my PII data sold
| from other channels.
| throwaway44432 wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30260987
| dheera wrote:
| Convenience and privacy are NOT mutually exclusive, the details
| are in the implementation.
| steadyready wrote:
| Not 100%, but we can outlaw PII selling, and therefor
| everybody wins. I get "peace of mind" knowing IKEA doesn't
| get targeted information, and IKEA still gets some level of
| anonymous demographic data from advertisers.
| [deleted]
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| So between this and the free Square magstripe reader for Lighting
| port, you've got everything covered.
|
| The only issue would be liability shift for a card that has EMV
| but doesn't have contactless and thus has to be processed as
| magstripe, but those cards are getting rarer as most issuers are
| replacing with NFC-enabled ones.
| LeicaLatte wrote:
| Very cool! Looking forward to POS demos at the March event.
| gandalfian wrote:
| Whinge: but the term "Tap to Pay" winds me up. "Hover to Pay"
| maybe, or "Contactless" makes sense. But tap the card reader with
| your card and you disturb the touchscreen and cancel the payment.
| Don't tap it's a trick.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| Yeah, I never understood why "tap" and "contactless" became
| synonymous in this context, given that "tap" is an onomatopoeia
| for the sound of two objects making _contact_.
|
| Is it possible that "contactless" actually refers to lack of
| electrical contacts (i.e., not using the gold pads)? We already
| have plenty of words for this idea: radio, wireless, inductive.
| Or is the intent to mean no physical contact whatsoever such
| that a tap would only be accidental?
| joshvm wrote:
| It's physically easier to touch the reader than to hover over
| it? Especially if the reader is a bit janky/older and takes
| time to complete the transaction. If you look at Oyster (TFL)
| for example, most people physically touch their cards to the
| turnstile/bus readers. The official advertising also uses the
| phrase "tap in, tap out" for stations where there are no
| barriers. "Contactless" is also fairly widely used in the UK
| - e.g. "do you take contactless?". Contactless is because in
| theory you don't need to touch your card to the reader. My
| new phone seems to have a good enough antenna (active?) that
| it triggers the POS terminal much further away than my debit
| card, but usually the activation distance is small enough
| that tapping is easier.
| bluk wrote:
| For most people, I bet it's more of a marketing term. When
| people hear "contactless", they might think that someone can
| steal your credit card number or charge you just by being in
| the same area.
| numpad0 wrote:
| It's not of both; significance of contactless technology that
| are used in Tap to [__] is that they require neither
| electrical nor physical connections. There are other RF-based
| technologies that require no conductive surfaces but some
| sort of mechanical touches.
|
| The reason why the users are instructed to slam the card or
| device is because users fail to perform required actions if
| simply told to hold the card or phones just right. Spatial
| cognition isn't a forte for many.
|
| The reason why _tap_ is used in VISA contactless over _touch_
| is probably because Suica system used by JR East uses the
| phrase "Suica is touch 1-second".
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| I do tap to pay, though. Contactless as in no electrical
| contacts and no human-to-human contacts.
| exikyut wrote:
| To me "tap to pay" encodes immediate-term incidentality and
| proximity.
|
| It's three syllables, it rolls off the tongue when you say it,
| it takes maybe 450ms to speak, and the brain can encode it
| using similar (or maybe the same?) mechanisms to how brand
| names and word combinations are captured without
| parsing/questioning when very young. This is one of many
| factors that contributes to a sort of "flow" that combats the
| "oooooooooh that sounds complicated"-of-death that stands to
| kill new complex digital products that need to be adopted en
| mass to function.
|
| "Tap" also encodes "move near reader" but does so by suggesting
| that you move _too close_. Thus you 'll either have people
| moving _well_ within the active area (at which point the
| transaction may even be able to start and complete by the time
| it 's been tapped). It's also physically easier for me to
| physically execute "tap object against other object" than
| "hover object 1cm in front of other object", especially when
| moving.
|
| If you want something to scale, you need fail-safe design. My
| local bus transit system has a giant (but featureless) NFC pad
| with a screen saying "Tap here " above it. The number of people
| I see tapping the screen is... the screen should obviously say
| "below", the active area should have a ring of LEDs around it,
| etc etc etc; it's broken design. _However_ , I've also seen
| people doing the same thing (tapping the screen) with payment
| terminals. In situations like this, you're designing the system
| to be viable for the dumbest user.
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| Well, "Hover around hunting for the NFC antenna" is less catchy
| than "Tap to Pay".
|
| I always assumed the term tap to pay caught on since the early
| EFTPOS terminals had the NFC antenna in a separate portion of
| the terminal, or under a non-touchscreen panel, so the tap of a
| credit card wasn't detrimental to the user experience, and now
| we're stuck with the term.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| For all practical purposes, though, it's a tap for most people.
| What's the limit on NFC? 1.5 inches? At least half of everyone
| that uses it will inadvertently hit the screen anyway. The UI
| should be designed with that expectation IMO.
| losvedir wrote:
| Is this only for merchants? I feel like here in the US we _still_
| don 't have a great way to send money back and forth with friends
| and family. Zelle is decent if both parties' banks support it,
| but otherwise I've tried Google Pay, Paypal, Venmo, and they all
| have some problem or another. A lot of them (I'm looking at you
| PayPal) require you to give them your bank username and password!
| nerdjon wrote:
| I could have sworn there was something about being able to hold
| 2 iPhones together to initiate sharing something with Apple Pay
| to a friend.
|
| That being said, I use Apple Pay all the time to send money
| between my partner and me. It is tied to iMessage but since we
| are always texting anyways it is super convenient. But the
| convenience may largely be due to already having my payment
| information as part of Apple Pay to begin with. But it just
| uses my debit card to send money, it doesn't need access to my
| bank account.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I wonder how many bank account holders are not part of Zelle.
| Based on the list of banks, it seems like it must cover a good
| majority of people.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Roughly 140 million customers have bank accounts that support
| Zelle. The network does about $500B in volume annually.
|
| FedNow instant payments will provide coverage for all US
| banks within 2-3 years.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| You can send money using Apple Pay, but most of these free
| money transfer applications are free because they're using ACH,
| so they "need" access to the bank account to see if the
| underlying funds are there.
|
| If they transact like a credit card processor, there are fees.
|
| This is setup so that you can run an existing merchant app
| (launching with Stripe) and collect money with all of the same
| fee requirements as using stripe normally.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| The press release includes mention of solopreneurs but nothing
| about friends and family, so i think there must be some
| business angle to it.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| There's many debit card "send to friend" apps that fill this
| space, including Apple Cash and Square Cash and etc. but your
| most likely compatibility app is Venmo. I've had zero issues
| with any of the Cash apps I've used to date, though.
| kencausey wrote:
| Regarding your allegation about Paypal, are you outside of the
| US? I ask simply because I am in the US and have never had to
| provide a username or password to my bank account to Paypal. I
| do have a bank account linked but it was done simply by Paypal
| making two small deposits to my account and then withdrawing
| them and asking me to tell them the amounts of the
| transactions. Given, this was many years ago, but I would be
| surprised to learn that this has changed.
|
| edit: typo
| jjice wrote:
| Had the same process on PayPal 2 years ago, so at least that
| recently it's still the case.
| kevinsundar wrote:
| Hopefully FedNow will come out soon and be usable, backed by
| the US government: FedNow
| https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow/about....
| vmception wrote:
| I don't like Zelle because I like using a credit card and
| accumulating credit card points.
|
| so its a non-starter for me.
|
| although one time I did a chargeback on a Venmo transaction,
| and Venmo banned me. that was an inconvenient few months before
| I maybe tricked their system. maybe as in I'm not sure they are
| just tolerating me.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| But Zelle, Venmo, and similar are cash apps...? Why would you
| want to pay a 3% credit card fee per transaction just so you
| could accumulate a couple credit card points?
| vmception wrote:
| Venmo takes credit card. Zelle does not at all.
|
| A couple reasons when eating that credit card fee is worth
| it for me:
|
| 1) Although it is accurate that paying the merchant fees
| yourself as a consumer makes it a loss on the credit card
| points, the points themselves can have a _much_ higher
| exchange rate with transfer partners, which makes it not a
| loss. For example, with the credit card company their
| points are range from a value of half a cent to 2 cents
| each, a hotel or airline may have a fixed exchange rate
| based on a different metric such as quality or distance,
| that is completely decoupled from the current dollar value
| of the good and service. (ie. a fancy hotel might cost $300
| one night and $1,700 another night, but only costs 25,000
| points all nights. better to just have a balance of points)
|
| 2) Many of my purchases are expenses I deduct against my
| taxable earnings, and that makes me less price sensitive
| and more spend sensitive. The points I can use solely for
| my consumptive activities, which makes play time free.
| joshstrange wrote:
| If I had to guess this will reuse their Apple Pay Merchant IDs,
| or at least I'm really hoping that's the case. If so any iOS
| dev that sets that up could use this (and has a payment
| processor to work with).
| [deleted]
| numbsafari wrote:
| It'll be fascinating to see if/when/how this rolls out
| internationally, which isn't mentioned at all in the article.
| ucha wrote:
| EDIT: thanks everyone for quickly correcting my mistake, I missed
| the part that explained that more forms of contactless payments
| would be accepted
|
| I don't really understand why a merchant would use this feature.
|
| If you already use a PoS, why would you replace it with another
| one that only supports customers who own an Apple device?
|
| If you accepted only cash, maybe it's a small improvement because
| you can use your existing iPhone if you had one to accept
| cashless payments from Apple customers...
|
| Does Tap to Pay only make sense in the second case or am I
| missing something?
| lxgr wrote:
| > why would you replace it with another one that only supports
| customers who own an Apple device?
|
| It's not only Apple Pay:
|
| > US merchants will be able to accept Apple Pay _and other
| contactless payments_
| darrenf wrote:
| > _If you already use a PoS, why would you replace it with
| another one that only supports customers who own an Apple
| device?_
|
| What makes you think it only supports payment _from_ Apple
| devices? The press release is pretty clear:
|
| _At checkout, the merchant will simply prompt the customer to
| hold their iPhone or Apple Watch to pay with Apple Pay, their
| contactless credit or debit card, or other digital wallet near
| the merchant's iPhone_
| danieldk wrote:
| _If you already use a PoS, why would you replace it with
| another one that only supports customers who own an Apple
| device?_
|
| Did you read the article?
|
| _At checkout, the merchant will simply prompt the customer to
| hold their iPhone or Apple Watch to pay with Apple Pay, their
| contactless credit or debit card, or other digital wallet near
| the merchant's iPhone, and the payment will be securely
| completed using NFC technology._
|
| This will accept contactless cards, Google Pay, etc. as well.
| riskable wrote:
| Sure would be nice if Apple and Google got together to accept
| each other's systems. Or even better: If there was a standard
| that let _any_ device send money with any other device (using
| compatible hardware).
|
| Imagine if there was a regulation that required
| interoperability. Or if the banks were forced to allow
| (authenticated) payments between systems without transaction
| fees.
|
| We're 20 years overdue for this.
| TAKEMYMONEY wrote:
| Some kind of permissionless transactions on a decentralized
| ledger? I don't think the technology exists.
| asadlionpk wrote:
| Maybe we will have something like that once "crypto" dies.
| sweetbitter wrote:
| Why would peer to peer cash a la Monero die as long as
| you can make a connection with TLS though? You probably
| refer to the uninformed retail investor hype more than
| anything else.
| mackmgg wrote:
| There are lots of small vendors (especially at farmers markets)
| still using the swipe only Square reader. This will presumably
| allow them to start accepting contactless as well. The main
| advantage of this is most banks put the liability from fraud on
| the business for swipe/manual entry transactions, but not for
| EMV (chip/tap) transactions.
| kyawzazaw wrote:
| What do you think of this?
|
| https://usa.visa.com/about-visa/newsroom/press-
| releases.rele...
|
| Note: I worked on this
| [deleted]
| rvz wrote:
| I guess it was a good thing that Square had to move quickly,
| Since Stripe threw the gauntlet at them for just the reader [0]
| (If you don't have an iPhone).
|
| Now they are directly allowing payments from the phone. No need
| for readers at all. Next will be the iPad as the integrated
| terminal with NFC and no external equipment.
|
| But there remains the next one. Cryptocurrency payments which
| both of them are still in.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27534927
| gigatexal wrote:
| So ... Square/Block is not dead?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Add society goes cashless we need to support infrastructure that
| doesn't leave the poor behind.
| sabjut wrote:
| Clarification due to a somewhat confusing title:
|
| This is about the merchant using an iPhone to accept credit cards
| and other Tap to Pay devices.
|
| The customer was able to pay with Tap to Pay with their iPhone
| for a while now.
| deepsun wrote:
| Android had that, just yesterday a merchant accepted my
| payment.
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| The real news is Apple specifically took a non competitive
| stance -- making the API available to third parties like Stripe
| - rather than building in house, leveraging Apple Card
| connections, or similar
| artursapek wrote:
| They probably don't want any more anti-competitive criticism
| right now.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Not that we know of yet.
| zumu wrote:
| They can always take a competitive stance later, once small
| businesses have gotten rid of all their PoS hardware. This
| makes that initial adoption much easier.
| monkeynotes wrote:
| I am surprised Apple didn't make this a closed system and
| compete with Square for small businesses.
| TheKarateKid wrote:
| They're playing the long game. Apple wants market usage to
| build bargaining power with the banks. They saw how the
| original Google Wallet was blocked from adoption because of
| control by the carriers and banks. Remember ISIS Mobile
| Wallet? (That name aged terribly..)
|
| We saw how it took 10+ years and a dominating market
| position for Apple to show their claws with controlling 3rd
| parties with the App Store. Make no doubt that once a
| significant portion of the market uses Apple hardware or
| services for transactions, that they will want control and
| a cut of the transaction.
|
| Notice how they say: _partner-enabled iOS app_
|
| This means Apple has to endorse each 3rd party, and they
| remain under Apple's control just like app developers.
| Angostura wrote:
| > We saw how it took 10+ years and a dominating market
| position for Apple to show their claws with controlling
| 3rd parties with the App Store. M
|
| Really? I thought Apple's position was fairly consistent
| and it took 10+ years for the companies _using_ the App
| Store to get antsy.
| tl wrote:
| That's a fairly revisionist view of history. Large
| partners had earlier had special pricing (ex: Netflix)
| lax enforcement of rules (ex: Facebook). Blowups where
| Apple presumed the right to levy a fee are also well
| known (Amazon book sales, Uber fares).
|
| The smaller fish got consistently screwed and no one was
| happy per se, but the sheer stupidity of Apple's recent
| actions do not help matters. For example, the app store
| cut is 30% unless you beg for scraps as a small business
| at which point you can get 15% until you start making $1
| million. Income cliffs aren't how real taxes work (let's
| be clear here: Apple is pretending to be the government
| with taxes and fees and shadow court system of app
| review), they're just how Reagan demonized them back in
| the day.
| sn1de wrote:
| It competes with anyone selling point of sale hardware. I
| think Square falls into that camp, no? I wouldn't want to
| be in that space right now. I don't see how this doesn't
| usurp a big chunk of their market since it isn't even a
| decision between buy this or buy that, but buy that or just
| use the thing already in my pocket.
| siver_john wrote:
| Anyone who is going to be buying PoS from Square at a
| rate greater than just the phone attachment reader, this
| won't be sufficient for. Using a phone for a business you
| personally run is fine, using a phone as the central
| point of your business for even a relatively small fast
| casual is going to be a nightmare.
|
| And for those even on Square Apple's ipads are still the
| preferred choice as far as I can tell. So there isn't
| much of a benefit other than fees.
|
| For anything larger than a small fast casual you quickly
| run into greater integration needs with things like KDS
| (of which a few do use tablets, Toast, Fresh, etc, and
| even then I think ipads are preferred. I know Square
| integrates with a few of those as well as NorthStar so, I
| don't think they may have much to fear other than at the
| low end mom and pop stores.
| desiarnezjr wrote:
| POS and payment hardware _used_ to be a fairly high
| margin vertical hardware business, but I don 't think so
| any longer. The real goal now is merchant / customer
| acquisition and service lock in. Basically I'd expect the
| hardware will be given away at some point.
| lostcolony wrote:
| I'm not even sure there, at least for another few years.
| No store, mom and pop or otherwise, would want to be "tap
| to pay only" as a means of taking credit card payments.
| There are still plenty of cards out there that don't have
| RFID chips.
| monkeynotes wrote:
| No one uses a mag reader here in Canada. Europe ditto,
| and sounds like the antipodes too. I don't know anyone
| who doesn't have RFID cards, debit or credit. Swiping a
| card through a mag reader is the backup option alone
| here.
| girvo wrote:
| Wow really? That's surprising for some reason. Here in
| Australia that's super common, RFID is in every card you
| can think of.
|
| If I go to the farmers market on the weekend, they all
| accept cash or tap-to-pay with a Square tap-only reader,
| and that's it.
| pedalpete wrote:
| This was my initial thinking, but then I think most
| businesses won't want to use a phone as their payment
| platform. My reasoning is that when I go into a business
| and I tap the Square terminal, I am assuming that
| terminal belongs to the business, because what individual
| would have their own square terminal.
|
| If the person who is ringing me up has an iPhone, and
| says "just tap this", there is a part of me that is
| wondering if this is the company's iPhone, or their
| personal device? Of course, this is easily resolved with
| the right surround which would remove this question, but
| I think it's somewhat valid.
|
| Isn't this how it works in Apple stores (I'm not an apple
| person). Don't they walk around with iPhones in this big
| chunky yellow cases, and then you just pay for stuff
| through that? Maybe I'm wrong...
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| Are you concerned about a malicious employee using their
| own iphone to steal the money? Why couldn't they give you
| their own square terminal? On that note, when you pay
| cash why can't they just pocket whatever you give them?
|
| I don't see why you care anyway, they would be stealing
| from the store, not from you. You would already have
| whatever item you are buying.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Because I can somewhat trust the Square terminal will
| show the correct amount? If I swipe some random persons
| iPhone, whats stopping them from showing a $10 total and
| charging $1000?
|
| Is the iPhone gonna print a receipt?
| GrifMD wrote:
| This is an interesting to think about. Say you're at an
| ice cream stand that has a Square Reader (the little
| square hockey puck reader) that's paired with an iPhone
| running Square's payment reader.
|
| The merchant rings you up for $5, shows you the phone in
| their hand indicating the cost, and the Square Reader
| lights up to show it's ready for payment. You pay via
| inserting your credit card, which processes in a few
| seconds, and then the payment is complete. The merchant
| is no longer showing you the phone, and presumably hits
| "No Receipt".
|
| However, the merchant actually has a second out of sight
| device that is set to charge $500 and is actually paired
| with the Square Reader. Because you've paid with a
| physical card, there's a good chance you won't notice the
| charge till you go to pay your credit card or check your
| bank account.
|
| This would probably be a short-lived scam, as the
| merchant's malicious Square account would have to be
| linked to a bank (I think this is the only option), which
| would identify them. I'm pretty sure Square requires ID
| verification of some sort as well. So reporting this
| malicious transaction to your bank/credit card would flag
| them.
|
| Additionally, if you're paying via a mobile wallet,
| you'll likely get an immediate notification saying "You
| paid $500 to Malicious Ice Cream Vendor".
|
| Now let's think about Apple's new plan. It could be that
| Apple layer's it's own mandatory interface that shows
| "Pay $5 to Ice Cream Vendor" regardless of the app being
| used. Maybe this is actually the employee's phone instead
| of the company's device, but that's the same as the
| employee stealing cash out of the register, so not really
| your issue.
|
| Or Apple could not layer it's own UI, and just open up
| the radio as an API. Apple could require that apps that
| use this API to have some additional verification to
| prevent someone from making an app that displays "Charge
| $5" when it's really charging $500.
|
| All that being said, I only see smaller merchants using
| iPhones + Square Readers. Maybe some boutique stores,
| food trucks, etc. Once a store gets large enough, they
| usually want dedicated hardware, even if it's a Square
| Stand.
|
| ---
|
| Here's Square's hardware page if you want visuals:
| https://squareup.com/au/en/hardware
| danw1979 wrote:
| Why do I currently trust any contactless payment terminal
| to debit the right amount from my Visa card ? The trust
| is built with every transaction.
|
| The first time I used one of those strange little white
| terminals it seemed a bit dodgy ... but you pretty
| quickly come to trust that what's on the screen is what
| gets debited.
|
| Also I doubt Apple would leave a nice app-accessible text
| field on the Tap To Pay dialog where I can insert my fake
| amount. Right ?!
| monkeynotes wrote:
| Square probably makes zilch on their hardware sales as it
| is, the real business is percentages on sales.
| ladberg wrote:
| I assume Square makes vastly more on fees than on
| hardware, so the opportunity to make fees off more
| merchants who have a smaller barrier to entry is probably
| beneficial, even if they don't buy hardware.
| toddh wrote:
| I think on the vendor side it's a lot harder than it looks.
| This isn't the kind of thing Apple is good at.
| davnicwil wrote:
| Think it depends on the lens you view this with.
|
| If it's iphones have reached saturation with small business
| owners, let's build a business on top of that already dug
| and locked in moat, then perhaps.
|
| If it's offering this feature is a _driver_ for more small
| business owners buying and sticking with iphones and the
| accompanying ecosystem, you can see how it 's perhaps the
| smarter play to be an open platform here.
| btown wrote:
| Right - the last thing Apple wants is to let Google take
| the high ground of "only our platform makes this
| business-critical API available to multiple apps,
| therefore if you're a small business owner you need to
| choose Android."
| WatchDog wrote:
| Presumably, in order to become an approved partner, you need
| to pay a kickback to apple.
| danShumway wrote:
| Thanks, I was actually pretty confused by this at first glance.
|
| As a non-Apple-user I've never personally used the feature, but
| I still thought that stuff like Tap to Pay was a somewhat large
| selling point for the Apple Watch. So for a second I wondered
| if I had just been drastically misunderstanding how that worked
| for a long time and had somehow never actually checked/verified
| that iPhones/Watch could do that.
| dkonofalski wrote:
| I use it nearly every day and definitely for almost every
| purchase I make. I no longer carry around a wallet now that
| digital IDs are a thing and have only had 1 situation in the
| last 6 months where I needed a physical card because they had
| TTP disabled on their terminal.
| otterley wrote:
| Walmart and Home Depot seem to be major holdouts in the
| U.S. I wonder what they're waiting for.
| dkonofalski wrote:
| Home Depot is exactly the one that I wasn't able to use
| it at. I don't go there too often, though, so it's one of
| those things where I plan for it when I need to go now.
| servercobra wrote:
| That's impressive, I want to live where you do! I swear
| there's one major retailer by me (never remember until I'm
| at the terminal) that still has tap to pay disabled.
| Catches me every time.
|
| I'm down to just a 4 card MagSafe wallet
| (credit/debit/ID/car key), but I'd love to get to just a
| phone. Sadly I'm sure Wisconsin will be another 5-10 years
| before supporting digital ID.
| dkonofalski wrote:
| I'm down to just my backup card in my MagSafe wallet.
| I'll occasionally keep my ID in there too but only if I
| know I'm going out to a place that needs to check a
| physical ID. If I could, I would do without the wallet
| completely.
| reaperducer wrote:
| A few years ago I was surprised that in some states it is
| illegal to go out in public without an ID in the event a
| cop stops you and asks for ID. Seems completely contrary
| to everything we were taught growing up.
| draw_down wrote:
| gtk40 wrote:
| In my area most restaurants with table service don't have
| an easy way to do tap-to-pay (a few chains have something
| at the table for you to pay at that supports it). Also two
| of my most common retailers do not (Kroger and Home Depot).
| Very few gas stations support it, though the one closest to
| me recently added it.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Kroger and Home Depot_
|
| Yep, Kroger and Home Depot are the biggest stores I've
| been to recently that don't take tap-to-pay, but there
| are some other national chains.
|
| Also recently: my neighborhood florist, doughnut shop,
| parking garage, and hamburger stand don't take tap-to-
| pay. I've never been to a gas pump that does, though they
| all have the logo for it on the front. Every time I've
| inquired, the people inside say it's not enabled.
|
| Record stores are about 50%. The one I went to most
| recently, I had to show them how to do it.
|
| But interestingly, my shoeshine guy does take tap-to-pay.
|
| I always keep at least one backup card and some cash in
| my wallet. I recently had to make an emergency trip to
| the Walgreens at 5am, and its credit card/tap system was
| down. It was cash-only for about a week. Glad I had cash
| backup so my family member's health wasn't held hostage
| by a technology glitch.
| 96stanleylee wrote:
| I was shocked reading the title thinking 'No way this isn't
| already on Apple devices'.
| m348e912 wrote:
| So basically apple is trying to move into square's business
| model? What about chips and swiping? Will apple provide a
| solution for that?
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| I honestly don't see what's so revolutionary about this. Why
| would anyone shell out multiple hundreds of EUR when a device
| that accepts payments can be purchased for a fraction of the
| iPhone price?
|
| E.g the most expensive device here [1] is only 120 EUR, and it
| can also print the bill. The cheapest that does the job is a
| mere 20 EUR.
| numpad0 wrote:
| EUR120 for a CC processing terminal with the fees for setup?
| Doubt it. That's the price of that little printer alone. Else
| they'll be paying them back in processing fees.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Sumit, and others..
| amelius wrote:
| Not only that, but also the potential for lock-in should be a
| reason to not use this.
| stu2b50 wrote:
| Because a lot of people, going by the sales numbers, have
| iPhones? It's more for very small businesses, who just need a
| quick and easy way to take card payments. Larger outfits will
| naturally invest in "real" PoS devices.
| Macha wrote:
| Plenty of sole trader workmen and taxi drivers and the like
| have the square terminal that, I just checked, costs EUR20.
| EUR20 to take payments from 100% of your customers rather
| than the 30-40% market share iPhone has here seems like a
| no brainer to me.
| stu2b50 wrote:
| I think you misunderstand the product. You can take
| payments from any contactless credential. That means
| credit cards, Apple Pay, google pay, Samsung pay, and so
| forth.
| Macha wrote:
| Ah, the key piece is this statement:
|
| > At checkout, the merchant will simply prompt the
| customer to hold their iPhone or Apple Watch to pay with
| Apple Pay, their contactless credit or debit card, or
| other digital wallet near the merchant's iPhone, and the
| payment will be securely completed using NFC technology
|
| The language is a bit verbose, but does look like it
| supports standard NFC based contactless also.
| laumars wrote:
| I can't speak for America but in the U.K. there have been
| terminals that do this that small independent businesses
| have used for years. They connect to your phone too and
| work with both Android and iOS. You see taxis, street food
| sellers and all sorts using them. They also cheap and yet
| still look a hell of a lot more professional than this
| thing does.
|
| https://merchantmachine.co.uk/contactless/
|
| Note that some of these even have chip and pin readers for
| those without contactless.
| stu2b50 wrote:
| It is the same in the states with Square (among others),
| but the ease of "I have to do nothing" is nonetheless
| extremely alluring to the most adhoc of businesses.
| Cederfjard wrote:
| Sorry, by "this thing", do you mean an iPhone? That it
| looks less professional to use a phone than a dedicated
| card reader? I can see it, I was just genuinely a little
| thrown by the wording.
| laumars wrote:
| Sorry yeah. I don't know why I shouldn't trust tapping on
| someone's iPhone but it doesn't scream "professional
| shop" in the same way that those card readers do. Even
| though those card readers are very cheap and ostensibly
| work the same, they just feel more "professional".
| cromka wrote:
| They're fairly common in the U.S., as far as 2015 that I
| remember, except they're often flaky, rely on Bluetooth
| and have their own battery, which many means merchants
| who don't use them that often would switch them off to
| save the battery. And with your iPhone, it's likely you
| have it charged and turned on at all times.
| sithadmin wrote:
| American merchants doing low customer volume (e.g. small
| shop, cafe, restaurant) are usually locked into using
| something like a terminal from First Data (~$150-200 USD
| minimum for the most basic device) and something in the
| ballpark of 2.2% to 2.7% in fees for every transaction.
| People paying the lower rate are doing over $50k per month in
| transaction volume.
|
| Compare that to competitors in the space like Square, which
| costs ~$300 USD and charges ~2.6% plus a flat 10 cents per
| transaction.
|
| If you're not doing over $50k in volume per month and already
| have an iPhone...you might as well just use the Square app
| and take NFC payments on your phone instead of investing in
| the reader (assuming you're operating in a space where
| consumers will readily have NFC payments ready).
| lkbm wrote:
| I suspect the real benefit is situations where the seller
| comes to you. A cafe can have an additional piece of
| equipment sitting on the counter for taking payments, but
| if you're a handyman or something, going to someone's
| house, being able to take payment on the spot using the
| phone already in your phone seems like a valuable
| convenience.
| snotrockets wrote:
| The basic square hardware is about 1/5 the price you
| listed, but I don't think it's the price, but the effort -
| filling a form in the app vs waiting for a package to
| arrive in the mail, and setting up some extra hardware
| (What I must wonder is what Apple charges Square for this
| feature)
| sithadmin wrote:
| It has probably been 5 years since I've encountered the
| most basic Square reader in the wild (the $10 magstripe
| one), and I can think of a single time in the past two
| years I've encountered the cheap one you're referencing
| (which is why I forgot about it in the first place).
| echelon wrote:
| I see these $50 ones all the time:
|
| https://squareup.com/shop/hardware/us/en/products/chip-
| credi...
|
| Plus if your customer drops this, they're not breaking
| your expensive iPhone screen.
| sithadmin wrote:
| Yeah, those. I basically never see them anymore. There
| was a short time where they seemed pretty common, but I
| honestly only remember seeing one once in the last two
| years, at a farmers' market booth. All the vendors I
| frequent that used to use that have either upgraded to
| the full-function $300 Square terminal, or moved to using
| other solutions like Toast or Clover.
| XCSme wrote:
| AFAIK and from my experience in many counteris PoS terminals
| are pretty expensive + they require you to have a constant
| cash flow otherwise they take it from you.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| Because you still usually need a mobile device the modern
| cashless till today is an iPad with an NFC dongle to take
| payments now you can skip the dongle..
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The UX of an iPhone is much better than most legacy card
| terminals and as others have said, many people already own
| one and thus wouldn't need anything other than installing an
| app.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Think of all the e waste and logistics saved by avoiding
| third party payment hardware that would've previously been
| needed to support accepting contactless payments.
| dbbk wrote:
| If you already have an iPhone you don't need to buy an extra
| device, obviously.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Well, if you already have an iPhone ? I would assume this is
| for small vendors? Otherwise indeed I do not see the point.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Might be big for bigger vendors too. I know Oracle extorts
| at least some merchants at least a few hundred dollars per
| year per credit card terminal for the privilege ("interface
| license fee" or some BS) of being able to use it. The more
| some of these legacy middlemen get taken out of the
| picture, the better.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Might be big for bigger vendors too_
|
| The POS terminals for BlueMercury (a national cosmetics
| chain) are iPad Airs with a tap-to-pay reader bolted on
| them. This would remove that bulk, expense, and potential
| point of failure.
| bladegash wrote:
| You haven't seen businesses using things like Square on an
| iPad or iPhone as a pseudo POS system? Square even has a
| contactless reader on the Apple Store. Presumably, now
| businesses do not have to use those third parties anymore.
| melling wrote:
| The long slow road to contactless payments. Almost 2 decades
| along in the technology adoption curve.
|
| I was ready for this in 2005.
|
| https://money.howstuffworks.com/personal-finance/debt-manage...
|
| If course as the article points out, it wasn't even new
| technology back then:
|
| " Not Exactly New Tech Mobile introduced the Speedpass in 1997.
| Speedpass is a small device on a keychain (called a fob) that
| users wave in front of the Speedpass logo on gas pumps. The
| cost of the gas is automatically deducted from the user's
| Speedpass account"
| zikduruqe wrote:
| I remember doing a POC using a Samsung device for NFC
| ticketing for BART back in 2004.
| TAKEMYMONEY wrote:
| Technically Speedpass was RFID, Apple Pay and most modern
| tap-to-pay tech uses NFC
| Spivak wrote:
| That's not at all comparable since you're not really paying.
| By that logic we've had contactless payments for hundreds of
| years in the form of opening a tab at a merchant.
| lmz wrote:
| That's sounds like stored value or contactless debit. What
| do you mean "not really paying"?
| Spivak wrote:
| You're not actually initiating a transfer of money. Sure,
| it feels like that but in reality they're just storing
| your CC info and debiting you either in advance (like
| gas) or settling up (like hotels). You have to have a
| prior relationship with the company handling your account
| _and_ figure out a secondary out-of-band payment flow.
| The fob doesn 't really add anything except as a holder
| of your account id.
|
| The only thing they have in common is the physical action
| of "boop boop" at a terminal or scanner.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| It's more like a contactless gift card: since you can't
| use your change for purchasing something different, the
| payment is in the purchase of the gift card.
|
| It's still got the "contactless" part, though.
| MattRix wrote:
| I can see their point. If you already paid in advance,
| you aren't really paying again when it subtracts the
| value from your account.
| queuebert wrote:
| And even when I pay cash, I just throw it at them and run,
| so no contact there either.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| I haven't used cash in Australia in about 5 years, maybe
| longer.
| xeromal wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softcard
|
| I used this payment processor in utah in the early 2010s at
| Jamba Juices and a few other random places. It was pretty
| sweet but its name was Isis and that was right around the
| time Isis started becoming big and I believe they ended up
| dying off.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Typically, when I see a company changing names, I tend to
| think they've fucked up something so badly in the past that
| they hope a name change will remove that stinnk. When you
| see a name change like this, you're like "yup, good move.
| hope you did it fast enough!"
|
| Avoiding the Isis name was even enough to change the story
| line for the animated show Archer.
| jacquesm wrote:
| EU has contactless paying for a while now, but it uses a chip
| embedded in the bank card.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I studied abroad in France in 2012--at this time, all
| European card readers had been chip-based for quite a while
| and my US credit card didn't have one. I couldn't figure
| out how to use them and many store clerks had no idea what
| to do with my magnetic-strip credit card.
|
| I went to England in 2019, at which point cards in the US
| had been updated to use magnetic stripes, and everyone was
| using tap-to-pay. It turns out my credit card had tap-to-
| pay support as well but it wasn't widely used in the US (or
| at least in my sphere). Now it finally seems common-enough
| here.
|
| I'm planning another trip to Europe in the next year...
| Really eager to see what payments look like nowadays.
| jurmous wrote:
| We in The Netherlands are one of the most cashless
| societies in Europe. We mostly pay with our mobiles or
| contactless with banking cards. We even are "going Dutch"
| sharing our bills with what we call a Tikkie: One person
| pays the bill and then we send over instant messaging our
| payment request for money which can be payed directly
| with one click and authentication in banking app.
|
| One thing that is annoying for foreigners with credit
| cards is that they are barely accepted here. We work
| mostly with Maestro and almost all Dutch e-commerce sites
| work with Ideal which directly link to the banking apps
| of the local banks.
|
| My wallet does not contain any cash anymore and just an
| ID and OV card.
|
| https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dutch-payment-landscape-
| one-m...
| pelorat wrote:
| Hopefully we can get rid of our OV cards soon. Annoys me
| a lot that I have to take it out of my wallet every time.
| larkost wrote:
| For Americans visiting the Netherlands one word of
| caution: many of the pay terminals (especially the
| parking ones) do not seem to like U.S. cards, and even
| some the vendors from Europe. When we were on vacation
| there a few years ago it was a roulette game to figure
| out if parking meters would take my card or that of my
| father in law (from Hungary).
|
| The problem is that they have a local exchange there, and
| do not have cross agreements with all of the payment
| vendors (not at the Visa level, but bellow that). It was
| annoying, and caused us a lot of hassle. I am not sure
| how we could have avoided it.
| munk-a wrote:
| For Canadians - they've got no issue with almost all of
| our cards. It's just the American ones that run into
| issues, so your chip & pin and tap features will work
| splendidly abroad.
| jurmous wrote:
| Most shops in the Netherlands work with maestro of
| mastercard and vpay of Visa. It is directly linked to our
| bank credit and has low transaction fees. Maestro and
| vpay is accepted all over the world. We work directly
| with IBAN numbers and not with credit card types like
| mostly in the world.
|
| Normal Mastercard/visa credit don't work here since shops
| have to pay way higher transaction fees while almost
| nobody uses them.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maestro_(debit_card)
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_PayPlease
|
| It will be phased out though in 2023 to Mastercard debit
| and visa debit so likely in the future Netherlands
| payment system will be more aligned with what other
| countries use.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > It will be phased out though in 2023 to Mastercard
| debit and visa debit
|
| That sounds like an absolutely terrible idea. Why would
| we give these two rotten-to-the-core companies such power
| over our payment systems?
| L3viathan wrote:
| I don't really understand your point, neither do I
| understand the change:
|
| Maestro and V-PAY already _are_ owned by those two
| companies, and are debit cards. What changes with
| Mastercard/Visa debit?
| jacquesm wrote:
| That it erodes the position of EU banks in favor of Visa
| and Mastercard. I have no problem with them facilitating
| the tech, but I do have a problem with them usurping the
| position of the banks. The EU is already too dependent on
| the United States in this manner, no need to make it
| worse.
| jurmous wrote:
| It sounds it will work the same as maestro but be usable
| in places where you need credit card numbers. https://www
| .mastercard.com/news/europe/en/perspectives/en/20...
| samstave wrote:
| Now you know why so many dutch ride bikes!
|
| :-)
| hk__2 wrote:
| Can't speak for other countries, but in France and
| Northern Italy this is the same: contactless cards
| everywhere. I live in France and --I have to check my
| banking app to check this because I don't remember-- the
| last time I went to a cash machine was almost one year
| ago.
| SSLy wrote:
| Same for Poland, and what I've heard, Sweden.
| mrep wrote:
| I'm in the US and the only time I can remember going to
| an ATM in the past 5 years is because farmers markets
| sometimes give you discounts > credit card rewards for
| cash and weed shops cannot use banks so you have to pay
| cash.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| IMO farmers markets would disappear if they stopped using
| cash. It's basically synonym for tax avoidance sprinkled
| with some fraudulent claims how your honey cures
| everything.
| mrep wrote:
| I totally agree farmers markets are all about tax
| avoidance. They would charge me the flat dollar amount
| for cash but then add in the tax when I used a card. No
| way they are paying taxes on that cash transaction.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Ditto for Finland. Contactless cards or mobile phone
| payments work everywhere.
|
| I haven't touched cash ever since covid hit, and very
| rarely before it.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| worth mentioning that this seems a problem limited to the
| US. Even in Canada, the smallest of towns will have
| contactless payment. Many Canadians don't really use cash
| because interac/credit cards have all supported tap to
| pay for over a decade now.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| To be clear, the US has contactless payments all over and
| probably has had them since ~2015, it just took some time
| for people to "discover" them.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| A lot of POS's support contactless payments, but they
| were kind of flaky for the first two years, and...oddly
| slow.
|
| Fred Meyers here in WA still doesn't support contactless
| payments (QFC, owned by the same company, does, however),
| annoying since I still have to shop there often.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > A lot of POS's support contactless payments, but they
| were kind of flaky for the first two years
|
| Yeah, that was my experience as well.
|
| > Fred Meyers here in WA still doesn't support
| contactless payments (QFC, owned by the same company,
| does, however), annoying since I still have to shop there
| often.
|
| I've largely had good experiences all over the midwest,
| but there are a few Stripe card readers that advertise
| "contactless" but don't actually work (probably
| misconfigured?). I've been traveling around AZ recently,
| and I've found a few POS terminals that don't support
| contactless at all, strangely. But overall they seem
| pretty widely available.
| techsupporter wrote:
| > Fred Meyers here in WA still doesn't support
| contactless payments (QFC, owned by the same company,
| does, however)
|
| Some Freddy's do, at least intermittently. A few weeks
| ago, the one in Lake City had it enabled on their pads at
| the self checkout and I successfully used tap. But when I
| went back a week after that, tap was turned back off.
|
| Kroger uses their smaller brands as testbeds for stuff
| and since QFC is somewhere in the bottom five for size-
| of-Kroger-operated-brands, I guess it makes sense.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| In the Seattle area, Fred Myer is the only place I can't
| use NFC payments, for the last 3 or 4 years. Target has
| them, though sometimes their COVID plastic on the
| terminals interferes with it.
|
| It's annoying I have to carry a credit card, driver
| license (WA doesn't support digital licenses yet), and an
| Orca card (also, annoyingly not phone compatible yet) in
| the wallet MagSafe attachment for my phone.
| brimble wrote:
| I've only just gotten used to the slide-it-in-the-slot
| kind. Whatever that's called. The thing that's replacing
| the magnetic stripes, more or less.
|
| I always forget about contactless. I think all my cards
| can do it? Not knowing for sure is why I never try, and
| just stick the card in the slot, which always works.
|
| I think I've paid with my phone one time ever. For some
| reason I can't bring myself to _trust_ it to work 100% of
| the time so I can leave my cards at home, at which point
| I may as well just use a card since I have 'em anyway. I
| guess I could start carrying phone + cash as a backup and
| skip the cards, but that's even _less_ convenient. I do
| activate the payment screen (iPhone) all the time by
| accident, though I couldn 't tell you how.
|
| (I'm not even _that_ old...)
| outworlder wrote:
| You should see the 'contactless' symbol (looks like a
| sideways wifi logo) if your card supports it.
|
| I generally pay with the apple watch if the store
| supports it (most seem to, nowadays). It is more
| convenient than reaching for the wallet since the thing
| is in my wrist anyway.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > I've only just gotten used to the slide-it-in-the-slot
| kind.
|
| I always called this "chip". My UK friends called it
| "chip-and-pin" in 2012. But yeah, no idea what the
| technical or widely-accepted colloquial terms are.
|
| > Not knowing for sure is why I never try, and just stick
| the card in the slot
|
| Yeah, for some reason the UX for contactless is terrible.
| Sometimes something will show four evenly-spaced green
| lights (and sometimes they're blue--in any case, why does
| that mean "contactless"?) but often those lights don't
| appear until you attempt a tap-to-pay and then they might
| be delayed by several seconds. And even then,
| occasionally the hardware malfunctions and can't actually
| handle tap-to-pay. These hardware failures seemed to be
| way more common in the early days, but now almost
| everything does support tap-to-pay--you just often can't
| tell until you try which is just the dumbest thing ever.
|
| > I think I've paid with my phone one time ever. For some
| reason I can't bring myself to trust it to work 100% of
| the time so I can leave my cards at home
|
| I definitely do it as a last resort, but I've done it a
| few times (e.g., if I forget my wallet). Mostly on iOS
| I'm often trying to pay quickly and I try to activate the
| contactless payment but I'll end up turning my phone off
| or I'll try to bring up my card before my phone is close
| enough. The uncertainty always makes me feel way more
| anxious than it should and it's just less stress to use a
| card (cards also don't run out of batteries).
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > Mostly on iOS I'm often trying to pay quickly and I try
| to activate the contactless payment but I'll end up
| turning my phone off or I'll try to bring up my card
| before my phone is close enough.
|
| Having an Apple watch helps out a lot here. I can't do it
| on my phone either, but on my watch it is trivial.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Good to know. I've had my eye on one for a while, but I
| opted for Air Pods last Christmas. :) Maybe this year...
| hackmiester wrote:
| The easier flow is to bring up the card while you're next
| in line, then tap it to the reader when it's time to pay.
| RulerOf wrote:
| You can often scan your phone/card much sooner than when
| you're presented with your total. I tap my watch at the
| grocery store as soon as I'm finished loading up the
| belt.
|
| Whenever "your transaction" begins at the register could
| be when you're eligible to present your payment to the
| terminal.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| my point is that contactless and chip-cards have been
| around for so long outside the US that magnetic stripes
| are the oddity. Even the smallest of places with
| electronic payments will support either chip cards or
| contactless tap or often both. Near the US border in
| Canada, many shops have machines that read magnetic
| stripes. These machines cater almost exclusively to
| American travellers.
| ska wrote:
| And yet, I've had contactless rejected (even, we want a
| signature) as recently as 2018, at least. In major metro
| in California - let alone gas-station-in-rural-Georgia
| type places.
|
| The tech was mostly there a while ago, but hardly
| universally supported. This is one tech area where the US
| has definitely been notably behind the curve.
| adventured wrote:
| People will still be talking about how the US doesn't
| have contactless payments another five years from now.
| It's an inexpensive way to feel good.
| cromka wrote:
| > People will still be talking about how the US doesn't
| have contactless payments another five years from now.
| It's an inexpensive way to feel good.
|
| From my personal experience, there were roughly about 80%
| of shops in NYC, up until the beginning of pandemic, that
| did not accept contactless or where it did not work. One
| particular supermarket next door had the proper POS for 3
| years and it still wouldn't work even this May when I
| left.
|
| The restaurants were even worse.
| newroman wrote:
| I tend to not carry a card anymore, just my phone
| (Romania). I don't remember the last time I went to a
| shop that didn't accept card. Everyone who accepts cards
| accepts contactless.
| nly wrote:
| The reverse problem is also true. As a Brit traveling in
| the US I was dumbfounded when a payment terminal asked
| for my zip code...of course i didn't have one and my card
| was rejected.
| Kognito wrote:
| Haven't used cash since the pandemic started in the UK.
| Covid encouraged even market traders and street food
| vendors to move to contactless payments - which were just
| about the final holdouts.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| NZ'er here - haven't used cash for years, except when you
| sell something online or buy drugs.
|
| Spend is kinda hilarious - in supermarket checkout "can I
| pay $150 in cash and remaining using card?" just so you
| don't have to deal with coins.
| rodgerd wrote:
| Same, but it's largely been that way since the early 90s.
|
| It's weird getting pitches from US FinTechs that are
| solving problems that literally only exist because of how
| painfully backward that US financial infrastructure is.
| rozenmd wrote:
| I've lived in France since September, and I think I've
| used cash... once? You can live entirely off using your
| phone/credit card to pay these days (if you don't
| frequent "cash-only" shops).
| vishnugupta wrote:
| It's tap to pay almost everywhere in the Netherlands.
| Apple Pay works like charm.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Can't speak for other countries, but at least here in the
| Netherlands, chip based cards are still the main type of
| card, though most of these cards support contactless
| payment as well. Almost all PoSes also support
| Apple/Google pay too which is actually pretty convenient.
| However, I _think_ many (supermarket) PoSes also support
| magnetic - they appear to have 2 card slots on them.
| Medowar wrote:
| ..just dont go to Germany. We are not very advanced in
| that regard.
|
| Of course huge amounts of stores offer contactless
| paying, but generally Cash is still dominant around here.
| Change is slow, and currently, Cash is still king,
| especially with small or street merchants.
| dash2 wrote:
| I always found that so weird! The Exportweltmeister,
| producing some of the most advanced equipment... and in
| many places you can't pay with a card _at all_. Why do
| you think it is?
| dathinab wrote:
| Machinery needs to be lubricated to run well.
|
| For many small businesses non-tax registered money is the
| lub which makes them run well.
|
| Jokes aside the price of getting a card terminal where
| for many businesses completely unattractive for a long
| time and often still are if put in context to the number
| of people which will use it.
|
| I know one local takeaway which stopped accepting card
| payment after their terminal broke recently, as it wasn't
| worth it to buy a new one. Instead they now allow sending
| money by PayPal, but non-advertised and mainly for a
| single specific big recurring customer and sometimes if
| someone doesn't has cash with them.
| yccs27 wrote:
| We Germans seem to love our cold hard cash, so the
| incentive to get a card reader is lower. There are even
| automatic coin counting machines in some self-checkout
| desks...
| TillE wrote:
| To clarify, you can rely on nearly any supermarket or
| drug store to accept credit cards / contactless these
| days. Daily shopping is no problem.
|
| Smaller stores or restaurants, forget it. Bring cash.
| jacquesm wrote:
| In restaurants it just so happens that not all of the
| people are on the books and neither is all of the income.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Since I'm dreading the coming of a cashless society, I'm
| really rooting for the German to push back against it as
| long as they can so that I can keep using notes and coins
| in euros.
| tuyiown wrote:
| For france: contactless on phone should be ok with widely
| used card providers (VISA)
|
| Beware, since covid, use of cash has dramatically fallen,
| last month a restaurant struggled to give me 2EUR change,
| they didn't have 2EUR in cash ! Paying in cash with the
| right amount should never be a problem though.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That may have been a signal that you should tip more.
| bayindirh wrote:
| In Turkey you can move around almost cashless now. Taxis
| started to accept cards in droves due to the pandemic and
| some municipalities are integrating VISA/Master infra to
| the mass transport, so you can just travel with your
| card.
|
| Besides that, literally everywhere allows contactless
| payments. Even Visa/Master is changing their card designs
| to move vital information to the back of the card to
| prevent information theft via hidden cameras or a very
| keen eye.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Same in the US. I virtually never use cash. The only real
| problem I run into is the occasional "open bar"--drinks
| are free but there's still an etiquette that you should
| leave a tip which generally means cash.
| emteycz wrote:
| The EU terminals have support for tips separated from the
| primary amount.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| If I understand you correctly, we have those here in the
| States as well, but the problem is you're not using your
| CC in the first place (in the "open bar" scenario) so you
| never actually use the terminals.
| cromka wrote:
| > drinks are free but there's still an etiquette that you
| should leave a tip which generally means cash.
|
| In my experience on such rare few occasions I was able to
| tip with Venmo.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Is there a "tip with venmo" poster displayed or do you
| have to ask the bartender their venmo account name? I've
| never seen this before, but agreed that it's rare.
| digisign wrote:
| A potentially malicious third-party selling your
| financial transaction history is not the best choice...
| by far.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I wasn't arguing _in favor_ of Venmo, but are VISA and
| MasterCard really better options in this regard?
| digisign wrote:
| They are required for the CC transaction, this adds an
| additional player that should not be necessary. In
| civilized countries they have direct bank to bank
| transfers.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| "Civilized" countries?
| namibj wrote:
| Like the euro countries with IBANs?
| digisign wrote:
| NZ and similar has had bank to bank payments for
| ...decades?
| namibj wrote:
| Fee-less and effectively instant? That's the state we are
| at, now, though it doesn't work for all banks due to the
| separate clearing system for instant transfers. Normal
| transfers just take a bank day delay if you're unlucky.
| [deleted]
| Thrymr wrote:
| That don't require tipping?
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > In civilized countries they have direct bank to bank
| transfers
|
| I'm sure whatever country you're from (or otherwise
| alluding to) is a fine place, no need for the transparent
| insecurity. :) Narrowly, I agree that secure (and fee-
| less) bank-to-bank transfers would be preferable to CC.
|
| > They are required for the CC transaction, this adds an
| additional player that should not be necessary.
|
| We're positing a situation where CC's aren't available,
| so it's not an additional player but rather a _different_
| player.
| digisign wrote:
| >> CC's aren't available
|
| A misstatement by me, still they are extra to what should
| be a bank to bank matter.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| No argument from me here. I would like to see better
| financial infrastructure. Specifically the idea that VISA
| is permitted to collect a 4% sales tax on virtually
| everything is a real bummer.
| can16358p wrote:
| If only our banks also supported Apple Pay...
| batuhanicoz wrote:
| That's probably a BDDK (regulatory body for banks) issue.
|
| Good thing is you can actually use Apple Pay, I use my
| Watch to pay for stuff all the time.
|
| You have to have a foreign bank account that supports it,
| I use Wise since it allows Turkish customers.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Yep, and I haven't 'dipped' a card for years now to pay.
| With the high value payments going up for contactless, I
| might forget my pin code altogether.
| munk-a wrote:
| While on our first pandemic vacation about three months
| back I had to acquire local currency and briefly froze in
| front of the ATM as it'd been over a year and a half
| since I'd entered that PIN anywhere. I had to mentally
| cycle through a few I've used over the years until I
| remembered the current one.
| andrewaylett wrote:
| At least in the UK, the increase in the contactless limit
| is accompanied by an increase in the frequency at which
| you're asked to confirm your card using chip+pin.
|
| However, most merchants now have terminals that accept
| contactless _mobile_ payments without a limit -- Tesco
| were one of the last to upgrade. So if you pay with your
| phone then you 're back at risk of forgetting your pin.
|
| I'd quite like it if there were some mechanism for
| setting device spend limits, as my smartwatch will do
| payments but with only a pattern for security it doesn't
| matter that I'd be happy only using it for sub-PS5
| payments: it'll quite happily authorise _much_ more.
| irrational wrote:
| The US has contactless payment with a chip on the card too,
| but this is different.
| hackmiester wrote:
| How? I was under the impression this tech was the same.
| Just like our cards' chips are compatible.
| woobar wrote:
| It is different in way that same technology now let you
| use your phone to accept payment via tap. Not just to
| pay.
| baxtr wrote:
| I worked in the mobile industry back in 2010s. Every carrier
| had big shiny projects called "mobile payments" going on.
| They were exploring, together with banking partners how they
| could revolutionize contactless payments.
|
| A key factor why all these project failed wasn't the
| technology. As you rightly point out, the technology was
| already available back then. It was mainly the vast
| differences in business models in the two industries: telcos
| and banking. The telcos were spoiled back then and expected
| any service to deliver a margin of at least 30%. Banks
| operated on a very different operating margin for the
| transactions. They never got that reconciled.
|
| I remember back when Apple introduced Apple Pay many people
| were stunned by how little they charged. But in the end, that
| was their key insight to make this work. Quite impressive
| from a company with very high margins on their core products.
| [deleted]
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Given transaction volumes, I imagine Apple will make more
| money from Apple Pay than the App Store soon, even with an
| order of magnitude smaller rake.
| bduerst wrote:
| Honestly, I think it was Apple refusing to fully support
| NFC until 2016 that prevented the market from jumping on
| contactless payments, at least in the US. They were holding
| something like a third of the market back from doing it
| which really made selling adoption to merchants difficult.
| baxtr wrote:
| Apple never played a significant role in any project
| since their install base was just too small.
|
| Apple is a company with a clear focus. They didn't even
| support MMS in the first iPhone. Rightly so.
| pdpi wrote:
| Contactless bank cards were widespread in the UK before
| Apple or Google had their own payment systems. I think
| the "real story", as it were, is that the banking
| industry held contactless payments way more than Apple
| ever did.
| bduerst wrote:
| Right, and with the advent of NFC in phones, US consumers
| didn't need the banks' permission to pay contactlessly.
| Despite this, contactless payment adoption was still slow
| in the U.S. even though most phones had NFC, it wasn't
| critical mass until Apple finally decided to support NFC
| technology.
| closeparen wrote:
| You do actually need the bank's permission to enroll a
| card for Apple/Android Pay, it is a feature they have to
| support.
| Jcowell wrote:
| I would argue it was a myriad of factors. Here in NY the
| adoption of OMNY and the pandemic contributed far more
| than Apple rolling out Tap to pay. The biggest issue
| being merchants lacking having the motivation to move
| away from outdated readers.
| rattlesnakedave wrote:
| This is correct. The other comment that I can't reply to
| is incorrect. Banks not supporting apple pay were a
| significant holdup to NFC payments in the US.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| There was an attempt to deploy contactless cards in the
| US in the mid 00's. I used mine _once_ at a grocery
| store. Merchants rarely supported them so banks stopped
| issuing them.
| dathinab wrote:
| If Apple wouldn't have effectively crippler innovation by not
| providing NFC (and later one locking it down) we probably
| would have contact less payment and many other similar
| services by now everywhere.
|
| I know of multiple pilot projects and startups which where
| basically killed (or majorly revamped) because just
| supporting Android wasn't viable and Apples not showing any
| intention to support NFC.
|
| The fact that the NFC we have now is missing a major feature
| of original NFC isn't helping either (the ability to act as a
| NFC card if the device it's embedded in is powered of/out of
| battery).
| kingkawn wrote:
| Had speedpass back when it first came out, great technology
| for the time
| profmonocle wrote:
| Something I was thinking about the other day is how some
| modern credit cards technically have four different ways to
| pay. Swiping pressure-sensitive paper over the raised numbers
| (the original method) is still possible, though I haven't
| seen a merchant actually do this since maybe the mid-2000's.
| Then you have magstripe, chip, and RFID all in the same card.
|
| Pretty impressive backwards compatibility, although I think
| the original copy-to-paper mechanism is _finally_ being
| phased out, since some new credit cards no longer have raised
| digits. (My new Visa from Chase has the digits on the back,
| and they 're only slightly embossed and not in the same
| place. Probably wouldn't work with the old swipers.)
|
| I wonder how long until magstripe is phased out?
| emteycz wrote:
| I had a merchant use the numbers on paper method in 2017.
| np- wrote:
| I rented a bicycle in Florida a few days ago where the
| merchant took an imprint of my card (yeah, in February
| 2022). I'm not even sure how that can possibly be cheaper
| than one of those Square devices at this point.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| Only one of my cards actually has raised numbers and its
| about to expire, so will probably get a completely flat one
| that replaces it as well. 2 of my cards are tap only, the
| mag stripe is gone - they are also store-specific cards, so
| that might have something to do with it.
|
| Master card said they will start phasing out mag strip in
| 2024.
|
| Soon enough tap/dip will be the only way.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Yeah, here in Canada the magstrip has all but gone the
| way of the dodo - it's chip-and-pin or tap everywhere
| here. IIRC vendors here stopped taking magstrips before
| the Americans even.
|
| Cards still have magstrips on them but I can't remember
| the last time one got used. Maybe a gas station.
| josephg wrote:
| Same in Aus. I think banking innovation like this is way
| easier in smaller countries like australia because
| there's way fewer banks. The USA has hundreds of banks -
| so getting them to all agree on a standard is near
| impossible. It's no wonder America still uses ACH and
| cheques.
|
| Australia has just 6 banks. And they have a history of
| collaborating on things like this - since a fluid economy
| raises all boats, and fraud hurts them all. All
| Australian cards and point of sale systems support chips
| and taps. And have for nearly a decade.
| Pxtl wrote:
| I think the problem is less the country size and more
| that the USA had a legislative structure that encouraged
| small, local banks until recently (1980 iirc) and so
| before then there was a Cambrian explosion of banks
| (pardon the pun). Now banks are gradually consolidating,
| but they have nothing close to the oligopoly that you see
| in countries without that sort of history.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| vinay427 wrote:
| There's a similar situation in Switzerland, where a
| handful of banks dominate the national market despite
| some smaller (cantonal) options that mostly have their
| own consortium anyway. The larger banks cooperated on
| creating a mobile payments platform known as TWINT [1],
| which allows for fast and free individual payments for
| splitting the cost of a meal, private sales, or even many
| in-store transactions. This allows them a competitive
| advantage over alternatives such as small Swiss banks or
| foreign banks that the _many_ non-Swiss residents in
| Switzerland may otherwise continue using. These other
| options are relegated to IBAN transfers which are notably
| less convenient.
|
| [1] https://www.twint.ch/en/
| throwawayboise wrote:
| The big holdout in the USA was fuel pumps. For some
| reason they demanded and got all kinds of extra time to
| convert to chip cards instead of swipe.
| [deleted]
| rustyminnow wrote:
| I had my card taken that way five-ish years ago. It was on
| a ferry where presumably there wasn't enough service to use
| a digital reader. Or maybe the system was just down. I
| never knew that was an option until then!
| tialaramex wrote:
| One of the hotels I used to stay at did this too, they
| had a modern card terminal when you checked out, but they
| took impressions of cards during check-in. It doesn't
| really do much of anything in the modern era, but you
| _felt_ like it was doing something and that 's enough.
| Card payments have two separate _uncorrelated_ steps.
| Authorisation and Settlement.
|
| In the Authorisation step, the merchant on behalf of the
| network can decide whether you, the supposed card holder,
| are authorised to make this payment. For example if you
| have Chip-and-PIN this is the step where a PIN failure
| means they won't give you the bottle of whiskey you just
| pointed at through the glass.
|
| To be effective Authorisation must happen up front. With
| Chip cards, (and also contactless payment) this can
| happen even offline, because the Chip can carry policy
| decisions like "Offline payment of up to $10 each time,
| $100 total before I talk to the network is OK, after that
| No more until I see a network" inside it.
|
| Impression machines were the very most rudimentary type
| of "Authorisation", the impression recorded is some
| evidence they actually saw your card. Or a card embossed
| with the same numbers, at some point. Modern networks
| don't want the useless paper trail which results, but
| some impression machines are still out there and hey, it
| felt like a "real" card payment. The fact they're
| essentially useless doesn't matter because...
|
| The Settlement step is separate, and often happens hours,
| or even days later. In this step the Merchant says, hey
| Payment Network, I'm Some Big Merchant and I want $123
| from your customer #9876.
|
| You might think, aha, and now they provide details from
| that authorisation right? Right? Nope. It's totally
| unauthenticated, subject to all manner of glitches and
| mistakes, and it is based entirely on trust. The big
| merchants are rich, so, if they sometimes lie and steal
| that's OK. Whereas if you, Mr Wage Earner, don't pay for
| that can of Pepsi, you're a criminal and you're going to
| jail.
|
| If some merchant in say, Spain decides you just spend
| EUR546 on a TV with your card, even though you've never
| visited Europe, that just works. Left to itself, EUR546
| plus conversion costs goes on your card account. To
| reverse that you'd have to notice the EUR546 charge, call
| your bank and complain about this clearly fraudulent card
| transaction. They're not always going to magically detect
| it, they should have some anti-fraud pattern matching
| e.g. if that store suddenly claims everybody living in
| your town in Ohio bought a TV from them, that's
| suspicious, it probably doesn't go through, and hey if
| you never visited Europe _maybe_ that 's enough to block
| it, but not necessarily. The responsibility sadly always
| stays with you to report any bogus transactions that get
| through even though the Card Networks made barely any
| effort to prevent fraud. So, read your card statements.
| fhood wrote:
| Me neither, my first encounter with it was 3 or 4 years
| ago at a backpacking shelter in Iceland.
| jon-wood wrote:
| On at least one of my cards magstripe is officially
| considered a legacy feature, I have to explicitly request
| that it's enabled if I'm travelling to a place likely to
| make use of magstripe payments, and it will only remain
| enabled for one or two weeks.
| munk-a wrote:
| Just don't assume that's to do you any favors - credit
| card fraud is 100% on them, the removal of features is to
| minimize fraud and if it's a feature you still
| occasionally need it's being done at your expense.
| blowski wrote:
| Sure it's 100% on the credit card company, but it's still
| very inconvenient for the cardholder.
| josephg wrote:
| I had no idea if the magnetic stripe on my (australian)
| credit card worked until a recent trip to the USA. I've
| had that card for years and I don't think I've ever
| swiped it before. Australian POS terminals won't let you
| use the magnetic strip on a card when chip & pin is
| available. Even inserting your card seems old fashioned
| now - PayPass (contactless payment) is by far the most
| common way to pay in australia.
|
| Each year there seems to be fewer reasons to carry a
| wallet around. Cash? Killed by covid. Card? Apple Pay.
| Drivers licence? There's an app for that. It won't be
| long before wallets are entirely useless.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I'm far more likely to have my wallet on me than my
| phone. Credit cards have infinite battery life, 100%
| waterproofing, no real-time tracking/spying and low to no
| cost to lose. Cash trades out the low cost to lose for
| anonymity.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| > no real-time tracking/spying
|
| You'll want a Faraday cage for any contactless cards.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Yes. They sell wallets with Faraday cages. I have been so
| far able to push off contactless cards, so I just assumed
| that other people who care about avoiding realtime
| tracking also insist on chip only.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" Swiping pressure-sensitive paper over the raised
| numbers (the original method) is still possible, though I
| haven't seen a merchant actually do this since maybe the
| mid-2000's."_
|
| I've noticed all the UK-issued cards I've received in the
| last year or two no longer have the raised numbers. Just
| the same details printed in ink on the card. Quite an
| improvement as the card details are easier to read now!
|
| Still seem to have the traditional (but almost never used)
| magnetic stripe, however.
| labster wrote:
| The numbers are no longer raised on my US Amazon card,
| but due to gray-on-gray the numbers are much harder to
| read. Smaller numbers give more white space for a very
| clean design. So I get to see much better modern UX as I
| squint to read my card.
| queuebert wrote:
| Of all of these, which is the most secure?
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| > original copy-to-paper mechanism
|
| And when the pressure-stamp machine broke, the merchant
| would use a pen, and write the card number by hand. No
| problem.
| jalk wrote:
| Or just drag the length of the pen over the paper while
| card is underneath. Repeat a couple of times to get a
| good imprint while making sure to keep paper/card
| alignment
| el-salvador wrote:
| I've had this happen in 2018/2019 in a Central American
| country.
| dathinab wrote:
| > is still possible
|
| Wait what?
|
| I think in many parts of the world that isn't possible
| anymore for a long long time. Like all of EU.
| mercutio2 wrote:
| Europe had dramatically more credit card fraud than the
| US, so Europe mandated EMV decades before the US.
|
| It will be many years before US merchants truly phase out
| accepting magnetic strips.
| samstave wrote:
| I wonder how many trillions of credit cards have become
| microplastics in our oceans over the many decades...
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| A lot of credit cards (Apple...) no longer have raised
| numbers, or a number on the front at all.
| bdamm wrote:
| Or even, in Apple's case, a consistent "card" attached
| number at all.
| mehrdada wrote:
| Is that right? My understanding is the physical AppleCard
| has a fixed number that is simply not printed and relies
| on rotating CVV via the standard chip reading like most
| standard chip cards. The device-based ApplePay can rotate
| its number but that too only rotates CVV by default.
| toufka wrote:
| And the numbers themselves that can be entered manually.
|
| 5 payment modalities with a thin piece of plastic.
| Twisell wrote:
| And what really make this a 5th modality is the required
| CVV (card verification value) printed on the backside of
| the card.
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| From what I know is CVV isn't required if the card is
| presented in person. The card processor will revoke your
| agreement if you verify the card is present and it's
| actually not however.
| el-salvador wrote:
| I'm not sure if this is still the case. But some years
| ago when paying with a mag stripe card in two South
| American countries seemed to type the CVV code on the POS
| terminal. This was different from other countries where
| they type the last four digits of the card number.
| jalk wrote:
| Which is why I have a habit of removing the cvv from the
| card(scratching the numbers off) and just remember those
| 3 digits like an extra pin. This practice is becoming
| obsolete with MFA solutions like 3Dsecure
| munk-a wrote:
| > Swiping pressure-sensitive paper over the raised numbers
| (the original method) is still possible
|
| I've seen this still happen occasionally in taxis - or
| rather I saw it happen within the past decade. When I last
| lived in the states I'd bump into it especially with rural
| taxis - I assume it's dying quickly though because it's
| incredibly inconvenient when compared to paying via an app
| or tapping.
|
| The lack of raised digits is actually a serious issue for
| legibility, I've had the digits fully rub off on some flat-
| printed cards - this may have been a low quality printing
| issue but either way I wouldn't applaud it being adopted
| since the raised numbers make it easier to read by eye.
| moron4hire wrote:
| I've had a lot of taxi drivers tell me they couldn't take
| credit cards at all. That is, until I tell them "I have
| no other way to pay, so I guess... later dude". Suddenly
| it's, "oh, oh, oh, the card reader is working again, look
| at that!"
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| And people wonder why Uber killed the whole taxi industry
| overnight.
| munk-a wrote:
| Well, in all fairness, Uber mostly killed the whole taxi
| industry by being really really illegal and not following
| any of the rules - including those meant for regulatory
| capture and those for safety. About 3000 women are
| sexually assaulted by Uber drivers every year - I'm not
| saying that doesn't happen with taxis too, just be
| careful about painting a too-rosy picture.
| girvo wrote:
| No one painted a too-rosy picture. They just pointed out
| that Uber killed Taxis because Taxis ran on horrible
| service plus a government mandated monopoly. Take away
| the latter like Uber did, and there's no need to put up
| with the former.
| signatoremo wrote:
| Taxi in a lot of places, and I've been to many countries,
| don't follow the rules either. Turn off meter, take long
| route, all the shady stuff, pretend to not understand
| foreigners
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| I've filled up gas once for the driver in Malaysia.
| munk-a wrote:
| Whenever I get into an airport taxi I always mention "Oh
| you take credit card right?" due to the queue system at
| airports they either reply yes and, if they actually
| don't, I get out guilt free at the other end - or they
| reply no and I move to the next taxi down the line. A
| significant number of airport taxis do shady stuff to try
| and extract extra or under the table payment.
|
| (Edit, just to clarify - I get out of the Taxi on the
| other end guilt free because the driver lied to me about
| payment options. I don't like skipping out on service
| payments - I think people should be paid fairly for the
| work they're doing (even if I could get away with not
| paying)... but if you're lying to me you're doing me a
| disservice)
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" I wouldn't applaud it being adopted since the raised
| numbers make it easier to read by eye._"
|
| I disagree with this. The new-style card numbers are
| printed in a much more legible typeface, with more
| contrast than the old raised numbers. Much easier to read
| IMO, although the blind may disagree! I've had no issues
| with the ink wearing off on any of my cards.
| scrollaway wrote:
| Cards are slowly moving towards not having printed
| numbers at all, and having the numbers only available via
| the issuer's app or website. This allows for rotating
| numbers.
| munk-a wrote:
| Rotating numbers are still extremely viable with fixed
| card numbers - it's possible to issue a set of semi-
| permenant printed numbers and also offer a tool that can
| issue additional digits for untrustworthy retailers or
| strange one-off payments. The removal of digits from the
| card itself is a cost being levied on the customer and it
| provides no real benefit.
| vxNsr wrote:
| Care to share some examples? I've never seen this in the
| US
| nsp wrote:
| Apple card is the only one I'm aware of
| gleenn wrote:
| The Apple credit card only shows the number if you reveal
| it in Apple Wallet app. Their card, technically run by
| Goldman Sachs, is all white with no numbers. Not sire how
| to verify but I've heard if you use it with Apple Pay I
| think it doesn't use that number, but a rotating one.
| pwinnski wrote:
| It _can_ use a rotating number, I think, but when I tap
| my watch, any receipt with shows me the last four digits
| still shows me the same last four digits. Apple rotates
| the CVV, but not the card number so much.
| mastazi wrote:
| In Italy, debit cards have numbers that are not embossed
| (however they are slightly "engraved" i.e. the number
| forms a slight depression on the card - basically the
| opposite of embossing). IIRC I've seen the same in other
| EU countries. I now live in Australia and in my
| experience, here all cards are embossed, no matter if
| they are credit or debit cards.
| softveda wrote:
| Most new cards that I have seen in Australia doesn't have
| embossing, they have flat surface. The number is simply
| printed on the back. Many banks allow you to lock the
| card using the App as well.
| tialaramex wrote:
| In the UK my current debit card for my good bank is a
| flat black rectangle with the Mastercard Logo
| (overlapping circles) the name of the bank, the chip
| connector, and an arrow (for those with reasonable vision
| to determine correct orientation if they've never seen a
| chip before). From a Tactile point of view it has an
| indentation (orientation again) and a single Braille-like
| bump signifying "This is your debit card" (other cards
| may have more bumps).
|
| On the back though it has a _lot_ of details about the
| account, who I am, validity and so on, so all the same
| data is on the card, just not on the front and not
| embossed.
|
| Current era bank cards aren't bright enough to change
| their numbers though, many of them are scarcely "smarter"
| than they were when they were completely passive, just
| barely enough going on to make it trickier to counterfeit
| them, not really any attempt to actually make that truly
| impossible for the majority of banks and customers. From
| the bank's point of view if they spend $5 per card to
| avoid $3 per card of fraud, they wasted $2 per card, and
| if half that fraud lands on the customer (because Mrs
| Smith didn't notice or the bank successfully prevented
| her claiming her money back and blamed her for the loss
| instead) they wasted $3.50.
| pwinnski wrote:
| In the US, I have multiple Chase credit cards with no
| raised numbers. The number is printed in flat ink on the
| back of the card.
|
| The Apple card doesn't display the number anywhere on the
| card at all.
| beambot wrote:
| PayPal was founded on this premise in 1998: Contactless
| payments through Palm Pilots. Wasn't a new idea at that time
| either.
| snapetom wrote:
| I distinctly remember, over ten years ago, paying with
| PayPal at a restaurant in Austin. That's why I have a
| profile pic on PayPal. The waitress requested I take one as
| it was the biometric ID method used.
|
| I'm pretty sure it was a tap to pay with the app. I can't
| remember if the other device was also iOS. It was
| definitely not the kludgy QR codes like it is now.
|
| I thought it was so cool, but it never caught on. I read a
| while later that PayPal was licensing that tech and let the
| license expire.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| When I visited Australia in 2015, I was really impressed with
| the ubiquity and speed of TAP to pay. We aren't quite their
| in the USA yet, but I do 90% of my payments outside using my
| Apple watch (with a bit of a lag that I didn't see in Aus).
| At least we aren't stuck using QR codes.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| 2011 was when I saw country McDonalds adopt contactless in
| Australia. From then it was a pretty quick adoption for it
| to be ubiquitous.
|
| I'm currently on a trip back to Australia and I forgot my
| wallet (!!), but it's fine because I just use Apple Pay
| _everywhere_. It 's never once been a problem.
| [deleted]
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| In Italy RFID payments have been a thing since 1989
|
| Unfortunately this is one of those cases where being among
| early adopters wasn't an advantage, in many areas of Italy
| cash is still the only viable payment method.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telepass
| pelorat wrote:
| > in many areas of Italy cash is still the only viable
| payment method.
|
| _cough_ tax avoidance _cough_
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| As an Italian I can't disagree, cabs not accepting credit
| cards infuriate me evrytime, but there's also a strong
| cultural resistance to change here.
|
| Also friction plays a part, Italy is the second oldest
| country in the World on average.
|
| My mom uses electronic payments, but I haven't been able
| to teach her how to pay online or "tap to pay" no matter
| how hard I tried.
|
| I won't even start to talk about my dad, who doesn't even
| own a smartphone or a mobile phone before the smart ones
| existed.
|
| They prefer to go to the ATM and pay cash, their
| lifestyle is very far from globalized even though they
| are strongly against tax evasion and always ask for their
| receipt.
|
| Ironically I've know about Telepass because my parents
| have been using it for as long as I can remember.
|
| My guess is that they trust Telepass because it's backed
| by a (former) public institution, Autostrade, but they
| don't trust mobile phone manufacturers or payment
| processor companies as much.
|
| I'm not sure they are completely wrong.
| tsycho wrote:
| So is this iPhone to iPhone only, or can the customer use any NFC
| enabled credit card directly, or (shudder) their Android phone?
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Yep, Android and tap-to-pay cards will work too.
| uptownfunk wrote:
| My local bakery doesn't even accept cash anymore. Probably a lot
| of places. I was explaining to my 3 year old that "a long time
| ago people used to pay with these green pieces of paper called
| money, now we use this thing called Apple Pay on our phones"
| brtknr wrote:
| Contactless but you have to tap and most will make slight contact
| :) exciting nevertheless!
| npollock wrote:
| "use their iPhone to seamlessly and securely accept Apple Pay,
| contactless credit and debit cards, and other digital wallets
| through a simple tap"
|
| other digital wallets = crypto?
| hrdwdmrbl wrote:
| Yes, could I accept DAI? Use State Channels?
| lxgr wrote:
| Google Pay, Samsung Pay etc.
| babyshake wrote:
| This seems to not be an open API but instead only available to a
| whitelisted group of partners. Is this correct? Is it reasonable
| to expect this to have open availability by later this year?
| jeffbee wrote:
| I wonder what role GS, the Apple Pay backend, has in this, if
| they are involved at all.
| MBCook wrote:
| I'm guessing none. It sounds like software developers will have
| to bring their own CC processing for this, not that it will use
| some centralized Apple designated processor.
| minhazm wrote:
| GS is the backend for Apple Card. Is it also the backend for
| Apple Pay? I don't think I've seen any evidence of that. I also
| don't see why Apple would need GS for that. Each bank needs to
| support Apple Pay, and Apple likely just integrates directly
| with Visa, Mastercard, Amex, etc.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Apple Pay is a Apple->payments-network; Apple Card is
| payments-network->GS/Apple. Apple Pay with Apple Card is the
| two tromboned together.
| edf13 wrote:
| See also:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30259251
| throw7 wrote:
| Can it receive contactless payment from android phones (e.g.
| google pay)?
| 0xTJ wrote:
| This title is awful, there's really no way for me to read it as
| accepting payment, instead of the ubiquitous paying that way.
| dnbdave wrote:
| How long until I can mug people via NFC and without the pesky
| mandatory minimums that come with weapons charges? Soon?
| syspec wrote:
| You can do that today, https://squareup.com/us/en/point-of-
| sale/restaurants
| tiffanyh wrote:
| This is the outcome of Apple's 2020 acquisition of Mobeewave.
|
| https://www.pymnts.com/apple/2020/apple-buys-mobeewave-for-1...
|
| It essentially turns an iOS device into a POS system.
|
| Apple already gets 15 bps for all Apple Pay transactions. I'm
| curious to hear the additional monetization Apple plans to get
| for this.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > I'm curious to hear the additional monetization Apple plans
| to get for this.
|
| I don't think there will be any extra monetization - this is
| presumably just an API in a future iOS 15.x that can be enabled
| via entitlements Apple assigns, so unless Stripe says "extra
| 0.3% fee for iPhone PoS payments" they likely won't make any
| money from it. Think of it as a funnel for getting the last 20%
| of businesses to accept Apple Pay.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| > "getting ... businesses to accept Apple Pay"
|
| This isn't just Apple Pay. You can tap your plastic credit
| card to pay using this. This is all contactless transactions,
| not just Apple Pay.
| [deleted]
| kingcharles wrote:
| They at least move some small retail owners from Android to
| iPhone, so they'll sell some iPhones.
| pilsetnieks wrote:
| > Apple already gets 15 bps for all Apple Pay transactions
|
| Bits per second? Beets per sale? Blackened pieces-of-eight per
| scurvy-rat?
| runeks wrote:
| Beets per sale
| mwint wrote:
| Schrute Farms mode.
| atlbeer wrote:
| Basis points
| thesimon wrote:
| Basis points
| mlyle wrote:
| Basis points-- hundredths of a percent. so 0.15%.
| ghayes wrote:
| I always remember "100 basis points = 1%". It's a little
| confusing since percentages are scalars, so really 1 bps is
| just the scalar 1/10000.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| If "bps" is supposed to stand for basis points, then you're
| saying they get a 0.15% cut?
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Correct.
|
| https://www.pymnts.com/in-depth/2015/apple-pays-business-
| mod...
| msoad wrote:
| Not all iOS devices have NFC. This is an iPhone-only feature
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| MacBooks strangely doesn't have NFC - IMO it's ultimate
| solution for U2F.
| aryamaan wrote:
| I would love to pay websites by tapping my phone to my
| laptop.
| ihuman wrote:
| Apple Wallet is already in macOS, but Apple Pay is only
| in Safari
| exikyut wrote:
| I was wondering how this was done.
|
| How on earth was what amounted to a userspace app able to talk
| to the NFC hardware to the extent necessary to process
| payments?!
|
| Presumably the app received the relevant entitlements to be
| able to do this...?
|
| How on earth was it done securely, within the Mobeewave app?
| kyawzazaw wrote:
| Check this out as well from Visa.
|
| Disclaimer: I worked/work on this https://usa.visa.com/about-
| visa/newsroom/press-releases.rele...
| Rafert wrote:
| The PCI Security Standards Council has been working on the
| Secure PIN on COTS (SPoC) standard for a few years:
| https://blog.pcisecuritystandards.org/new-pci-software-
| pin-e...
| staplung wrote:
| I was using my phone for contactless pay but stopped during the
| pandemic because I realized it was more cumbersome than using a
| credit card to do the same thing. The phone tries to scan my
| face, fails because of the mask, then just waits for a hot second
| to see if my face might change shape, then prompts for a
| password. With the credit card, I just swipe it over the reader
| and I'm done.
| verst wrote:
| You can configure your iPhone not to use FaceID for Apple Pay
| only. That's what I did for the same reason as you. I just
| quickly enter my PIN to use Apple Pay.
| pornel wrote:
| You can use a contactless physical card too. No need to use an
| outdated insecure mag strip.
|
| Apple-style solution to this is to buy Apple Watch which
| authorizes payments without face scanning.
| macintux wrote:
| I use my Watch, which is almost always simpler even without a
| mask.
|
| However, you should be able to hurry it along to prompt for a
| password. Apple doesn't make it easily discoverable, but if you
| tap on the status message when it's trying to decide whether it
| recognizes you, it will prompt you for a password instead
| (while logging in, and I imagine during Apple Pay as well).
| [deleted]
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| Thankfully in iOS 15.4 (currently in beta), Face ID works with
| a mask on by scanning the shit out of your orbital bones
| aquark wrote:
| Question for anyone in the know at Stripe ... does this make a
| iPhone work like the existing BBPOS WisePOS terminals and able to
| interact with a web app _without_ any code running on the phone
| itself (other than Stripe's)
|
| Or is it more akin to the BBPOS Chipper readers and still needs a
| custom mobile app to interact with?
|
| ie: can a platform built on Stripe use this for their customers
| without needing to supply a mobile app?
| motohagiography wrote:
| Correct me if I'm way off, but when Apple launched it, iPhones
| had a separate secure element with applets that use keys stored
| in slots, very similar to chip/pin cards. The protocols for
| payments (EMV standards) all used symmetric keys, and so any
| issuer who wants to be a part of Apple Pay needs Apple to get a
| key into their SE.
|
| It's possible to do this through a process called
| "personalization," where in general, a secure element has
| "initialization" keys that are installed at manufacture, but
| then the keys get updated (personalized) once the user gets it.
|
| I'd speculate that Stripe could get integrated using a
| personalization protocol, with new keys over the existing
| protocols, and not require its own intitialization keys in the
| SE. A further speculation would be that Apple's pay partnership
| with GS may have facilitated a different protocol that uses
| more manageable asymmetric keys for doing reconciliations, and
| all the complexity is in integrating with generic payment
| terminals, whereas for anything that doesn't depend on that,
| you can use more sensible protocols that aren't freighted with
| backward compatability to chip/pin cards.
|
| Square would probably be the easier integration, but Stripe may
| have some secret sauce for this. Anyway, wildly speculative,
| and would be interested what's way off in that.
| edwinwee wrote:
| It's designed to work through a mobile app via the iOS SDK:
| https://stripe.com/docs/terminal/payments/setup-
| sdk?terminal....
| aquark wrote:
| Thanks -- appreciate the reply.
|
| As a future product option I'd love to be able to treat these
| as standalone terminals, so we can offer a web based POS app
| (running on a different device) and the phone as a payment
| terminal without having to deploy our own mobile app.
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| How does Square feel about this?
| akakwwe wrote:
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| Great, now I need an RFID-blocking wallet because any yeehaw can
| place their iPhone to my pocket to charge my credit card.
| lxgr wrote:
| That's been possible ever since mobile POS services have
| started supporting contactless payments, without any
| catastrophic fallout.
| [deleted]
| TIPSIO wrote:
| I would really like to see it become normal for tipping people
| this way (that isn't at a cash register / tap) but with AirDrop.
|
| For example, I recently had movers. I went out of my way to get a
| cash tip for them earlier. It would have been nice to skip that
| and just ping it at them somehow without awkwardly saying "Hey
| friend do you have Venmo? Apple Pay? CashApp? I'd like to tip
| you. What's your phone number?! Let me get that, thanks, bye,
| delete.".
|
| This is NFC and a bit different but just my thoughts.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Indeed - I'm really surprised that Apple doesn't have some kind
| of "just pay another apple user" feature.
|
| I know that would open them up to lots of KYC requirements, as
| well as require them to do some of the evil things that
| financial laws require (eg. tracking all payments, closing
| accounts and banning users for certain things while not being
| able to tell the users why, freezing users money till they can
| present documents they don't have, etc.)
|
| But it still seems worth it to take over the payments space
| from venmo, cashapp and paypal, make the wall to switching to
| android a little taller, etc.
| thefreeman wrote:
| They do support this in iMessage, it's called Apple Cash.
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207875
| jjice wrote:
| While true that that could be nice, I don't think the burden of
| asking for an alternative like Venmo or CashApp like you listed
| is that high, and this case requires that the movers would also
| have an iPhone.
| yuuu wrote:
| I had movers a couple months ago and tried to tip them. Note
| that I don't ever carry cash and am a proponent of abolishing
| the Federal Reserve. I asked them for their Ethereum or Bitcoin
| address, and they said, "neither of us don't have that, but we
| take cash." I calmly tried to explain to them the evils of the
| Federal Reserve for around five minutes, then began to set them
| up with their own cryptocurrency wallets on their phones. I
| then plugged in my Ledger Nano S and had them each read me
| their public keys, which I entered into Ledger Live and sent
| them each their five dollar tip. It was a simple process and
| did not take longer than thirty minutes. By the end of the
| exchange, they were both very happy with the arrangement and
| thanked me profusely for setting them up to use the future of
| currency, although I was still in the process of explaining its
| importance.
|
| "Teach a man to fish," they say, and I believe I did it on that
| day. I encourage everyone else to do the same.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| I can vouch for that story.
|
| I also had movers, and wanted to tip them. When I asked what
| they took. I was shocked when they said Bitcoin!
|
| They said some person that they had helped move before had
| helped them set up bitcoin addresses.
|
| They were so excited by this. It was also pretty easy to
| convince them to read me both their public and private keys
| for those addresses (I told them that if I sent it to their
| public key, it would be public so their boss and the IRS
| would find out, however, if they gave me the private key, it
| would be completely private).
|
| I then tipped both of them $50. They were so overjoyed.
|
| Then later that night, I emptied both of their wallets.
|
| (By the way, to the OP, thanks for teaching them about
| cryptocurrency, and for the $10).
|
| /s just in case anybody is confused
| [deleted]
| glitchc wrote:
| This is offensive. They would have to wait at least a day for
| their transaction to be settled on the chain.
| soheil wrote:
| So how does not carrying cash equate to getting rid of the
| Fed? You know it's not the money printed on paper that
| matters, but the actual number in a database?
|
| Let's not turn hn into a discord channel about how crypto is
| going to disrupt all the things and make them more
| "decentralized" by having "federated exchanges" that allow
| you to "stake" your assets where, otherwise, it would be
| impossible to form a "liquidity provider" since, of course,
| without it why would you even want to live.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| _set them up with their own cryptocurrency wallets on their
| phones_
|
| What specifically did you have them set up?
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| Woosh
| numbsafari wrote:
| You tipped movers $5 and stole their time from them so you
| could play with your toys.
|
| I'm surprised all you got was a "Bless you, bless you"
| response and not a shiv or a fist sandwich.
| mike1o1 wrote:
| I can't tell if this is satire or not.
| ask_b123 wrote:
| I thought it clearly was sarcasm/satire, but now you've
| made me doubt.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Given the 'about' section of their user says "you're all
| idiots" it seems reasonable to assume everything they say
| is either satire or an attempt at it.
| kesselvon wrote:
| I feel it has to be. Who is tipping their movers only $5?
| PoopScript wrote:
| core-utility wrote:
| Transfer fees on Ethereum are currently $2.75, so either
| the movers got $2.25 or the dude paid an extra 55% just
| to pay them in something that's less useful for them.
| hn_throwaway_69 wrote:
| Print and frame this content chain as a fine example of
| Poe's law.
| CPLX wrote:
| This line really should answer that question:
|
| > By the end of the exchange, they were both very happy
| with the arrangement and thanked me profusely for setting
| them up to use the future of currency, although I was still
| in the process of explaining its importance.
| [deleted]
| vmception wrote:
| Feels like Tom O'Donnell, who has written satire like that
| a long time ago
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-
| libertari...
| orangepanda wrote:
| Looking at their comment history, I think they're actually
| serious.
| aixi wrote:
| it's clearly satire, just because he's into crypto
| doesn't mean he can't be cheeky about it
| d3nj4l wrote:
| I was sure it was satire until I started reading GP's past
| comments. Definitely a very post-ironic moment.
| pkulak wrote:
| Has to be a Reddit-style pasta, though I can't find it
| anywhere else...
| [deleted]
| cruano wrote:
| Anon needs to move to El Salvador
| AnonHP wrote:
| This would've been a lot more convincing if you'd stated the
| transaction fees for the $5 tips. :)
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| >> I calmly tried to explain to them the evils of the Federal
| Reserve for around five minutes ... >> sent them each their
| five dollar tip ... >> It was a simple process and did not
| take longer than thirty minutes.
|
| This is satire, right?
| VicVee wrote:
| Reads like a real reddit post from 2009
| have_faith wrote:
| Great copypasta material.
| ctime wrote:
| Bravo
| alexkoeh wrote:
| This is art
| danShumway wrote:
| I love this analogy[0], but to play devil's advocate I do a
| lot of tipping in cash and it's kind of a pain to break down
| big bills, so I can see some benefits to normalizing more
| digital options that actually work.
|
| My bank is digital, it doesn't have a local branch, and most
| ATMs around me dispense cash in $20 bills. So I can make a
| small purchase near the ATM if it's in a shop and then ask
| them to give me change in smaller bills, but usually there's
| nothing I want. I don't have a local branch to drive to, but
| maybe other banks would help split bills? It's not awful, but
| it is pretty inconvenient.
|
| Of course, the way to fix that might not be for everyone to
| standardize on iPhones, it might be to just have more ATMs
| that dispense smaller bills. But I do see why someone would
| find tipping primarily over, say, Venmo preferable, even
| though I don't think that appeal is enough to outweigh the
| benefits of cash tips (privacy, universal compatibility,
| simplicity, etc) in many situations.
|
| Or I could just start tipping everyone everywhere in
| increments of $20 bills I guess, but I'm not that generous.
|
| ----
|
| [0]: assuming you did actually mean it as an analogy for
| dropping cash for digital payments
| hunter2_ wrote:
| I solve for this by stockpiling small bills in a drawer
| from which to replenish my wallet. I add to the pile by
| specifically paying with a large bill whenever the pile
| starts to dwindle, and I use a card whenever possible
| otherwise. The trick is to not habitually spend them except
| in situations (like tipping) where there's no reasonable
| alternative.
| danShumway wrote:
| That makes sense. I think part of the problem is I'm
| trying to play both sides and mostly use a card for
| normal purchases, and mostly use cash for smaller
| purchases/tips. So you're right, I'm almost never using
| cash in situations that net me more small bills than I
| started with.
|
| If I was a bit more consistent about occasionally just
| paying for something normal with cash it would possibly
| be more sustainable, right now I usually try to break
| apart small bills specifically when I'm completely out of
| them or when I know I'm going to need to tip someone in
| like an hour.
|
| Also yeah, having a stockpile would probably be a good
| idea, since right now I typically only keep enough small
| bills to get me though my immediate tipping needs and no
| further, so any surprise situations mean I'm immediately
| out of small bills and can only pay for things by card.
|
| Regardless, definitely more management than I would like
| to do, so I get why people might want a system that
| doesn't force them to think about that stuff at all. It's
| just that the alternative digital systems come with other
| downsides.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I would really like to see it become normal for tipping people
| this way (that isn 't at a cash register / tap) but with
| AirDrop._
|
| I totally agree.
|
| At a parking garage the other day, there was a long line of
| people trying to get their cars back from the valets because
| one person was trying to tip with some random app.
|
| "Oh, you need to download this. Yeah, open the App Store. Then
| download it. Yeah, it take a while. OK, now sign up. --five
| minutes elapse-- OK, now what's your username so I can send you
| the money? Did you say 'e' or 'v?' Was that '4114' or '1144?'
| OK. Sending now..."
|
| It took like ten minutes.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| iPhone needs a little printer that prints a QR code that
| represents an NFT that was just minted in blockchain
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I have to go out of my way to have any cash, which I do,
| since I happen to go to bars that still accept cash (many in
| my area are cashless). It's nice to throw down cash in a
| crowd vs. trying to swipe and sign when the line is crazy.
|
| To get money, I have to drive to an ATM and pay 1-5% fee to
| convert my money from bits to paper. Fortunately I have a
| bank that refunds ATM fees.
|
| The point of this thread is that we are one step closer to
| making your first scenario "Hey let me tap you the money" and
| that's the end of the discussion.
| gwd wrote:
| > I read this sort of thing all of the time and it sounds as
| if you're just going out of your way to not carry cash for
| the sake of it. The drawer behind me right now has loose
| change in it, my jeans pocket always has a fiver.
|
| What happens when you tip that fiver away? You have to go to
| the ATM and replace it.
|
| It's been years since I've carried a wallet in my pocket.
| When I go out I have my keys in one pocket and a phone, whose
| case has a slot for a credit card in it, in the other pocket.
| I never have my debit card with me, and my memory of the PIN
| keeps getting rustier. The barrier to getting cash and then
| carrying it around keeps getting higher; and it's rare that I
| have a problem from the lack of it.
| iam-TJ wrote:
| The big problem here is you've no fall-back for when the
| place you're trying to pay, or their merchant services
| provider, has a communications/network outage or malware
| attack or has assets frozen - some of which affect multiple
| large retailers.
|
| There have been many instances over the years, even just in
| the U.K., where small and large stores have been unable to
| accept digital/network-required payments and ended up with
| massive queues or customers abandoning shopping carts full
| of items due to not having cash.
|
| "Spar cyber attack hits more than 300 convenience stores"
| (2021-12) https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-
| lancashire-59554433
|
| "Manx Telecom broadband outage affects 4,000" (2020-08)
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-isle-of-man-53920785
|
| "Wirecard: 'It's really bad. I'm left with nothing'"
| (2020-06) https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53222181
|
| "Debit card glitch means thousands charged twice" (2018-09)
| https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-45400234
|
| "Visa (Europe) says service returning to normal" (2018-06)
| https://www.bbc.com/news/business-44335804
|
| "Asda card machine fault leads to queues at checkouts"
| (2016-10) https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-37815973
|
| "RBS says it has resolved debit card computer glitch"
| (2016-10) https://www.bbc.com/news/business-37658559
|
| "Lloyds Banking Group says card problems sorted" (2014-01)
| https://www.bbc.com/news/business-25907000
|
| "Card payments system crash disrupts shoppers" (2010-10)
| https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-11458962
|
| Also, interesting and somewhat unexpected contactless from
| long distance!
|
| "Contactless 'charging errors' at Marks and Spencer"
| (2013-05) https://www.bbc.com/news/business-22545804
| dkonofalski wrote:
| And there's no fallback for when you have to make
| multiple payments and don't have the cash on hand
| already. There's no fallback for an ATM outage where you
| can't withdraw the cash. There's no fallback for a
| communications/network outage at the bank where they
| can't query your balance and withdraw funds for you.
|
| There are problems with any system. This one has the
| advantage of convenience.
| brewdad wrote:
| Ok. But it's the rare instance where I can't postpone my
| purchase until the system comes back online, or just go
| elsewhere. I can't remember the last time the US had a
| nationwide outage like that. Maybe an individual store
| but not the entire region.
|
| I keep an emergency $20 on me going back to the early
| 1990s but I've only ever needed to spend it once in
| almost 30 years.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| Or the store just has to close entirely because they
| "can't" accept cash.
| dkonofalski wrote:
| It sounds like the whole benefit behind this new form of
| Apple Pay acceptance is that there is no app. You just double
| tap the sleep/wake button to open Apple Pay and then tap the
| phone to the payee's phone. That's no more complicated then
| reaching for a wallet and pulling cash out of the wallet.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| It's significantly more complicated because there's a
| protocol and negotiation involved.
|
| If I want to give you $1, I hold my hand out and there it
| is. I can literally stuff it into your back pocket. You're
| not involved in the exchange, there is no exchange.
|
| We can even do it UDP style - imagine that I check out of a
| hotel room and leave a dollar on the bedside table for the
| room staff. There's not even an ack.
|
| By contrast this involves me asking if you have an iPhone,
| and then asking if it has this feature, and then we both
| get them out, and then I type in an amount, and then we
| tap. We'll just assume that it works perfectly first time.
| Maybe you need data, maybe you don't. It's not everywhere,
| basement of a bar, long distance train comes to mind.
|
| It's not rocket science, sure, but it's way more
| complicated.
|
| In the UK I can send payments using online banking. If I
| already know the payment details of the recipient, then
| sending a transfer is approximately the same level of
| convenience as cash e.g. I just choose the amount and press
| send. But the initial setup is far more onerous.
|
| It's only simpler if you're a cash refusenik for whatever
| reason and so you first inject the whole "well then I had
| to go to an ATM". The equivalent would be like me saying
| "well first I had to get an iPhone", obviously that would
| be unfair.
| dkonofalski wrote:
| The user doesn't know that any of that stuff is going on,
| though, and you don't need data for this to work.
|
| It's not anywhere near as complicated as you're making it
| out to be. Those saying "I had to go to an ATM" are
| simply voicing a legitimate downside of cash that this
| doesn't have because you only have to get an iPhone
| _once_ whereas you have to go to an ATM /bank _every_
| time you need cash.
| heartbreak wrote:
| I have to go out of my way to get cash. It's not that I avoid
| carrying it, it's that I never use it for anything so I don't
| have it on hand. I never pay for anything with cash except
| tips, and the smallest bills I can get from an ATM are $20,
| which (except in the case of movers) is already more than a
| typical delivery tip.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Exactly. I haven't carried a significant amount of cash for
| several years now. I'll pull out a little if I'm meeting
| friends at a cash only bar or something but otherwise, it's
| just an encumbrance and a liability.
| vhgyu75e6u wrote:
| He went out of his way because he simply doesn't carry cash
| anymore, what's so hard to grasp?
|
| I live in a capital city in Europe and I hardly ever have
| cash at hand because EVERYONE accepts credit cards, I can
| even go days without reaching for my wallet because of NFC.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| Here in London tons of people and places have pay touch readers
| like this:
|
| https://imgur.com/nNaDddR
|
| I'm talking museums asking for donations. To street performers
| in the tube. They're everywhere.
| benbristow wrote:
| The lollipop and aftershave man in my local nightclub's
| toilet has one. I'm tempted to give him a pound next time to
| see what pops up on my bank statement (and for some probably
| counterfeit cologne).
|
| For context: I don't know if they're a thing in the States
| but in most male toilets in nightclubs (and more 'clubby'
| bars) in the UK there's usually an annoying guy in the toilet
| who turns off the hand driers and gives you paper to dry your
| hands whilst passively aggresively demanding a tip in return
| for a lollipop or a spray of various aftershaves/deoderants.
| sgerenser wrote:
| Yeah "restroom attendants" are definitely a thing in the US
| as well. I used to think it was stupid but from the club
| owner's point of view it probably helps a lot to avoid
| vandalism, drug use, etc. that might otherwise occur in the
| bathrooms. I do end up seeing a lot of people just not wash
| their hands because they don't like feeling obligated to
| tip the guy for handing them a paper towel.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I just take a paper towel myself. If there is a guy
| standing there holding the only paper towels in the
| bathroom, I'll just ask him why he's holding them. I
| wouldn't use one from him either, that just seems gross.
| I wouldn't tip for it in any case. It's just slightly
| glorified panhandling, I assume it isn't at all condoned
| by the club owner and they'd probably throw the guy out
| if they were aware. I haven't actually seen it in the US,
| though, just at international airports outside the
| country, so maybe the dynamic is different here.
| vasco wrote:
| Most people prefer to play along and have a good time and
| not think much about it and focus on the night itself.
| Less about making a point and more about having fun at
| the place you'll walk back into once you exit the toilet.
| dumbfounder wrote:
| I have seen this solved at a bar with a QR code linked to
| venmo.
| hn_throwaway_69 wrote:
| Eh, I hope it doesn't. Tipping needs to die out. I'd prefer to
| have the moving company pay the movers a living wage such that
| a tip would be unnecessary and politely refused.
| ludamad wrote:
| I'd rather an industry standard payout, but the workers
| getting pay proportional to revenue is actually not a bad
| model. I just hate the analysis paralysis
| TIPSIO wrote:
| This is obviously a bit flame-y / unrelated / political.
|
| Regardless of how you personally feel about US wages and the
| 20% I already prepaid for tip through the company to them, to
| be able to send money to others would be useful.
|
| There could be other cases besides tipping.
| exikyut wrote:
| I'd be really interested to know what to properly call it,
| but IMHO this is the kind of thing that the market will never
| solve top-down because the structure of the relationship
| would never support it.
|
| I think an on-the-ground solution that caters to the long
| tail would be the only thing that would basically survive.
| Everything else would succumb to social forces and basically
| just fizzle out.
|
| AirDropping Apple credit could be an interesting pilot study,
| but I doubt Apple would do something like that sadly :/
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I 'd prefer to have the moving company pay the movers a
| living wage such that a tip would be unnecessary and politely
| refused._
|
| Clearly, you have no idea of how the moving industry works.
| Everybody's a contractor of a contractor of a franchisee. The
| person who picks up your stuff is not always the person who
| delivers it.
|
| When I move (frequently), I make sure to tip each person
| packing my stuff $50, each person loading my stuff $50, and
| the driver $100 for < 1,000 miles, or $200 > 2,000 miles.
|
| Lifting and carrying and handling other people's prized
| possessions isn't an easy job. This is how I show
| appreciation when the job is done well.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Please don't confuse the restaurant industry where tips
| subsidize wages with the original idea of tipping as a sign
| of gratitude an thanks. A tip can be a meaningful and
| impactful way to say "You went beyond expectation, did an
| awesome job and I really appreciate it". Why would you not
| want that option?
| post_break wrote:
| Tipping at a restaurant is the only place where I would tip
| face to face. Maybe a valet but I avoid that like the
| plague too since you're giving your car to someone and no
| accountability. Name a few face to face tipping scenarios
| besides food and valet that is common? I'm seriously
| blanking on anything.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| Barber shop, movers, cab driver, bellhop, coat check
| person, doormen/building staff around the holidays
| post_break wrote:
| Maybe I'm a prude but I wouldn't tip for any of those
| services besides getting a hair cut. Need to add elevator
| driver and that guy in the bathroom who stands around and
| makes everyone uncomfortable.
| arnarbi wrote:
| Because it doesn't actually work that way and it's in no
| way an "option". In reality tipping becomes expected and
| people withhold it when the service does /not/ meet
| expectation. That's awkward and too confrontational for a
| lot of people so they'll just tip anyways.
|
| Personally I also find it exhausting to have to judge every
| single service I get. So I just tip a standard amount,
| there's absolutely no feedback involved. So there is no
| point.
|
| There are lots of downsides with very few upsides.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| For situations where laws allow for sub-standard wages,
| such as restaurant wait staff, I agree with you. It's not
| really an option, it's exhausting, there's no point.
|
| For situations that aren't codified into law like that,
| it can more legitimately be modulated according to how
| the service made you feel, from zero to "keep the change"
| to a couple bucks to sky's the limit.
|
| The former should be solved by abolishing tipping. The
| latter should be solved by technology that's somehow as
| frictionless as cash.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > laws allow for sub-standard wages, such as restaurant
| wait staff
|
| The law does not allow for sub-standard wages, however.
| If everyone stopped tipping today, wait staff would get
| the same minimum wage as any other job.
| isaacaggrey wrote:
| For those curious, this is accurate according to
| Department of Labor:
| https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-
| wage/tipped
|
| However, I think the point being advocated in this thread
| is that businesses should have to pay minimum wage (
| _before_ tips). That said, it would be interesting how
| employers would respond if that was required by law -
| since removing tips would not save the employer any
| money, I wonder if that would result in less hiring.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| You can see the results in states that have no tipped
| minimum wage, such as WA/CA/OR.
|
| Generally, restaurant prices are higher (minimum $25 per
| meal per person without alcoholic drinks), but tipping is
| still expected by the waiters for waited service. Bottom
| line is waiters earn more money, but possibly fewer
| people can afford to eat out and maybe there are fewer
| waiters overall.
|
| I dislike waited food service anyway, I much prefer to
| just buy at the counter and bus my own table, and it
| might result in more restaurants like that.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| What are your thoughts about using a counter and self-
| bussing but the clerk faces a tablet at you with 3 large
| buttons: 18%, 20%, 25% ?
|
| Not only will the personal service be minimal, but the
| only part you can even judge at that point is how well
| they took your order... who knows if something will go
| south! So it's clearly just about keeping menu prices
| artificially low.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| No, actually the law allows for below-minimum hourly
| wages for tipped jobs. That's the whole issue...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Employers are obliged to ensure that employees they are
| paying below minimum wage because the employee gets tips
| get paid at least minimum wage including tips.
|
| If an employee lets their employer know they did not earn
| enough tips to meet minimum wage, then the employer must
| pay them more to ensure they get minimum wage.
|
| Also, in many jurisdictions of the US where the same
| minimum wage applies to traditionally tipped employees,
| the tipping dynamic has remained. For example in
| California, Oregon, and Washington, the cultural
| expectation is that customers will still tip waiters,
| even though the waiters are earning the same minimum wage
| as everyone else.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| Mainly because it gives perverse initiatives to pay
| employees less and tipping to be standard not unusual
| gratitude. Sometimes you can't have nice things because the
| way society collectively behaves.
| websap wrote:
| Did they just completely destroy Square's POS device business?
| joshstrange wrote:
| No support for Swipe or Dip but this is pretty awesome. I still
| need swipe/dip so I'm stuck with my BTLE device for that stuff
| but this is pretty awesome for contactless.
| websap wrote:
| Yeah, but this seems like a pretty e2e solution to me now.
| Most people get an iPhone before their first credit card.
| They can not get an Apple Card directly on their iPhone with
| a few touches that instantly gets added to their wallet (the
| physical card takes days to ship), the card in the iPhone
| Wallet can now directly be used.
| manzu wrote:
| Why is this US only?
| [deleted]
| knaik94 wrote:
| That's a pretty awesome way of letting iphones start to replace
| POS terminals. It's been done before through add on and swiping,
| but the major cc companies are phasing out swiping. And the real
| play is introducing this into an iPad at some point. An iPhone is
| handy day to day and great for small run produce markets, but
| it's been a long while since I have gone to restaurants around my
| college campus that didn't have an ipad or tablet for paying.
| dhosek wrote:
| I'm surprised that the iPad isn't being supported for this.
| jurmous wrote:
| While iPads have NFC chips none of the released iPads have an
| NFC antenna.
|
| https://9to5mac.com/2014/10/24/nfc-ipad-air-2-secure-
| element...
| MBCook wrote:
| Do they have the NFC hardware iPhones do?
|
| Maybe because of this they will add it to new iPads going
| forward.
| exikyut wrote:
| What I wish could happen but probably never will: that this takes
| off sufficiently much that it's commercially viable for Apple to
| spinoff a personal payments business that lets me yeet small
| amounts of money directly out of people's bank cards for personal
| payments. Perhaps with an eg $50-100 limit or so.
|
| PayPal allows free C2C transactions that are much higher in any
| case.
| axg11 wrote:
| Three interesting implications from this press release:
|
| - Stripe as the first user of the SDK vs Square: For any small
| business starting this spring, I can't think of a reason why they
| wouldn't use and iPhone+Stripe to start off. Zero hardware cost
| (assuming they have an iPhone), no need to wait for hardware
| delivery.
|
| - NFC will be coming to the iPad.
|
| - The ability to keep the same hardware but switch payment
| network lowers switching cost for small businesses. Payment
| platforms will have to differentiate on ecosystem as well as
| cost.
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| Presumably companies like Square and Clover are selling their
| own POS hardware and probably are less than happy that every
| iPad and iPhone running latest OS with NFC is now a competitor
| to their hardware. Stripe does not make hardware (as far as I'm
| aware) so this initial partnership makes sense.
| scarface74 wrote:
| No software company _wants_ to sell hardware outside of
| Apple. They only do so when forced to support their services.
| Software scales with a marginal cost of $0 and is much less
| messy.
|
| Before smart phones and generic hardware was a thing, I
| worked at a company that wrote software for field services
| ("sending people places to do things") we had to resell and
| maintain custom ruggedized windows mobile devices, mobile
| satellite receivers (cell phone data wasn't reliable), etc.
| We were glad to transition to generic smart phones. At later
| jobs, when I worked in the same space, we used generic
| Samsung Android tablets.
|
| Microsoft doesn't even really care if you buy an XBox, it's a
| loss leader. They would be more than happy if you bought
| their subscription gaming service and ran it on someone
| else's hardware.
| axg11 wrote:
| > No software company wants to sell hardware outside of
| Apple.
|
| You're right, but it's a strategic mistake. Hardware comes
| with more loyalty and brand awareness. How many consumers
| are aware of Square (cute little hardware squircle) vs
| Stripe? That brand awareness allowed Square to launch Cash
| App.
|
| I think this extends to the rest of big tech too. Amazon
| and Facebook would do well to learn from this. Amazon and
| Facebook's most favourably viewed products are all hardware
| (Alexa, Kindle, Oculus)
| scarface74 wrote:
| Amazon doesn't care if you buy a no margin Alexa device.
| They will gladly license Alexa to all comers. Kindle is
| available everywhere. People are "loyal" to Kindle not
| because of the device that relatively few buy, but
| because their whole library is tied to the Kindle app
| that runs everywhere.
| echelon wrote:
| No software company wants Apple to be anywhere near their
| business either. Apple greedily takes 30% and owns your
| customers.
|
| Apple is bad for business. When they come to your industry,
| be afraid.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Let's be real, the only companies paying Apple 30% are
| the pay to win games selling loot boxes. That's where
| most of the profit in the App Store comes from. It came
| out during the Epic trial.
|
| Software companies like MS, Adobe and most of the
| streaming services don't even allow you to pay for access
| through the App Store.
|
| Anyone selling physical good if they are using any sort
| of Apple payment, they are using Apple Pay and paying
| standard credit card processing fees like Uber.
|
| As far as Tap to Pay, they are charging the standard
| merchant amount that all other payment facilitators
| charge.
|
| As far as "owning your customer", I don't want every Tom,
| Dick and Harry to have my personal information. I use
| "Hide My Email" whenever possible. Owning your customer
| also means jumping through hoops to cancel (see NYT).
| mojzu wrote:
| I'd imagine for these companies the hardware is a necessity
| to get customers into their payment processing business,
| could even be a loss leader rather then a profit centre. If a
| lot more people now have a potential POS device in their
| pocket it could expand their markets quite a bit, although
| other payment processors who formerly didn't want to or
| couldn't make hardware may now become competitors
| ritwikr wrote:
| Stripe does have a physical terminal too
| (https://stripe.com/terminal) but I've never seen it at a
| merchant.
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| Huh, I did not know that, I've also never seen one out in
| the wild.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| I just recently noticed some- Jimmy John's uses the
| stripe Verifone reader and Toast tablets use the BBPOS
| Chipper (but this may not be thru stripe). These readers
| are "stripe-compatible," but not exclusively for stripe.
| bduerst wrote:
| You probably have. They're completely non-desccript and
| unbranded, unlike most other POS solutions, so you're
| likely to not remember it.
| alephnan wrote:
| 2018: "Square become Stripe, while Stripe becomes Square"
|
| Stripe's bread and butter is payment backends, while
| Square was the point-of-sales system
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18007454
| [deleted]
| tonightstoast wrote:
| Stripe's fees are pretty high though so that is certainly one
| reason small businesses may avoid it. Sounds like Apple is
| adding more processors soon though so it will be interesting to
| see how the space places out.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I imagine this is going to built on top of the existing Apple
| Pay infrastructure which means any payment provider that
| works with Apple Pay will probably (eventually) work with
| this. There are a good number of places that work with Apple
| Pay.
| snotrockets wrote:
| A small business is low volume, hence going to have a hard
| time getting good rates. And they're also constrainted on
| resources, so the extra effort to get a few points off may
| cost more than those points (as written above - they're low
| volume. The cash value for a bp is much lower for them than
| for a high volume business)
| joshstrange wrote:
| No doubt, you can get ~2% processing and no flat fee even
| with low volume but what you get isn't as polished as
| Stripe and takes some more development work to
| integrate/use.
| joshvm wrote:
| There are established people in this space with very easy to
| setup solutions, like Zettle (PayPal) for example - who also
| offer connected receipt printers, barcode scanners,
| tablet/phone terminals and integrations with ecommerce,
| accounting and so on. The only real advantage I can see Apple
| having is if they charged a lower transaction fee, but it's
| going through Stripe, so no - 2.9 % + 30c versus 1.75 %. I
| don't think waiting for hardware is a major factor - you can
| get a terminal shipped next day if you want.
|
| I mention Zettle because it's hugely popular in the UK. A lot
| of market traders use them, which has probably saved a lot of
| businesses that would traditionally be cash-only. COVID has
| helped to encourage cashless purchasing too. Europe generally
| has always been pretty ahead with contactless payments (Zettle
| was a Swedish fintech before PayPal bought them).
| axg11 wrote:
| Stripe might lower their rates for Tap to Pay. I also think
| you underestimate the friction of getting extra hardware for
| a small business and the advantage of using hardware you
| already have (iPhone).
| poxrud wrote:
| Wait until small businesses discover that Stripe keeps the full
| 3-4% fee even when issuing refunds. This makes Stripe
| unsuitable for many types of small business, like clothing or
| electronics stores where customers are accustomed to be able to
| purchase items with the intention of returning all or a portion
| of the order. Square does NOT charge this fee, which makes it a
| much better option.
| asd88 wrote:
| I believe SQ most basic card reader is free, so hardware cost
| is not really a competitive advantage here.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| It notes that it's supported iPhone XS or later - what feature
| was added to the XS that is not in the X? When Apple names the
| "pro" model like this does it mean that the XR from the same
| generation is not supported?
| CharlesW wrote:
| Possibly this? https://9to5mac.com/2018/09/12/iphone-xs-and-
| iphone-xr-can-r...
| numpad0 wrote:
| 8 Global/7 JP and later has FeliCa secure element; checkm8
| exploit works up to X. It's a fine thinking to _not_ accept
| secure transaction originating a potentially jailbroken device;
| perhaps that's why?
| exikyut wrote:
| I was wondering about that too. I wonder how much SecureROM
| extraction pays nowadays? It used to be $200k circa 2015:
| https://ramtin-amin.fr/#nvmedma
|
| (Interim while the above URL currently doesn't work:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20200217151824/http://ramtin-
| ami...)
| umanghere wrote:
| There are publicly available SecureROM dumps online, see
| http://securerom.fun
|
| The author(s) maintain the site out of personal interest.
| exikyut wrote:
| I too would be extremely interested to know this. The sibling
| comment referring to NFC looks interesting, but I can't help
| but think there's an extra dimension or two.
|
| I thought most bank cards used RFID per se as opposed to full
| NFC.
|
| Plus (and much more significantly) there's the fact that _the
| phone is doing the magic voodoo sekret handshake thing_ that
| has been the stomping ground of credit card terminals for only
| the past two decades or so.
|
| My understanding was that Apple Pay stuck Apple in the middle
| as an intermediary to the payment, which was internally settled
| via backend servers. I *think*. I don't think the phones behave
| as credit cards in the strictest sense - my (pulled out of thin
| air) guesstimate is that it _emulates_ a credit card to the
| extent that it make the payment terminal happy, but in such a
| way that the actual payment settlement is done out of band.
| Or... something.
|
| Hmmmm, maybe something similar is going on here, where the
| phone talks the protocol but not strictly exactly the way a
| payment terminal would, such that Apple ultimately
| intermediates the final settlement of the transaction.
|
| I feel super dumb here, mostly because this whole world is (
| _sigh_ very understandably) clandestine. I would be _very_
| interested to learn about any high-level "oh okay!" type info
| on the subject that might be out there!
| reffaelwallen wrote:
| Impactful to Square?
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Maybe, depending on how much of their revenue comes from
| hardware sales.
|
| Eventually they'll just be an app that runs on the phone,
| making it significantly easier for a business to signup to use
| their service.
| 0des wrote:
| Square is a different market segment, more of the first year,
| trendy-but-still-playskool retail merchant setup.
| verst wrote:
| At my local farmers market every vendor uses Square to accept
| payments, but also seems to have iPhones themselves.
|
| With this announcement I can very much see Square being
| removed from the equation in this small business without
| fixed store front scenario.
| ra7 wrote:
| Could you expand how Square is different market segment? I
| thought POS terminal was one of their primary products.
| 0des wrote:
| Square is for small or entry level merchants who may be in
| their first year and can't afford an actual production
| grade POS or web integration, stripe is for those who've
| realized they've reached that point or have encountered
| Square's limits, and by them moving into the entry level
| market by supporting this method of transacting with
| iDevices, I'd say square should be considering their next
| move.
| lucioperca wrote:
| Let me guess, 30% goes to apple when you do that?
| paradite wrote:
| The technical term for the cut is called Merchant Discount Rate
| (MDR). It's usually 1-3%.
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/merchant-discount-rate....
|
| I'm not sure what's the exact revenue share model / contractual
| agreements between Apple and its partner payment
| platforms(Stripe, etc).
| 0xy wrote:
| This is a clear shot across the bow of Dorsey's empire. Given
| Square's huge portion of their revenue coming from readers,
| things have to be looking bleak over there.
|
| Square is down 61% since October.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| I think until this goes out of the "NFC only" card capture
| space there's going to be room to compete. I don't think you
| can realistically run a point-of-scale business that doesn't
| allow mag stripe / chip payment yet. Maybe I'm wrong though.
| jon889 wrote:
| Weird that this is US first when in the UK it's extremely
| rare not to be able to use contactless. (I only say UK as I
| live there, but definitely there are other countries that are
| heavily focused on contactless)
| adventured wrote:
| Apple might perceive a large advantage to moving quickly in
| the US market right now, that there is something to gain by
| grabbing land there sooner rather than later (as opposed to
| rolling it out in various smaller markets with higher %
| contactless rates first).
| curiousllama wrote:
| Square stock lives and dies with bitcoin - wouldn't use the
| stock as an indicator of this
| edwinwee wrote:
| (I work at Stripe.) Square and Stripe Terminal are designed for
| pretty different use-cases:
|
| Square is an instant POS that small business owners can use to
| accept payments for their shops.
|
| Stripe Terminal allows platforms and tech-forward companies to
| integrate with the Stripe API--to deploy and customize in-
| person payments for bespoke checkout flows (think Shopify,
| Lightspeed, or HouseCall Pro).
| adventured wrote:
| A lot of bubbly tech stocks are down massively, it's not
| particular to Square. The bubble popped.
|
| Teladoc is down 77%
|
| Fastly is down 77%
|
| Pinterest is down 71%
|
| DraftKings is down 70%
|
| Zoom is down 69%
|
| Palantir is down 66%
|
| DocuSign is down 62%
|
| DoorDash is down 61%
|
| Twilio is down 57%
|
| Twitter is down 55%
|
| Roblox is down 55%
|
| Etsy is down 54%
|
| DigitalOcean is down 53%
|
| Shopify is down 50%
|
| Cloudflare is down 50%
|
| Unity is down 49%
|
| Netflix is down 42%
|
| CrowdStrike is down 39%
|
| Okta is down 36%
|
| Atlassian is down 35%
|
| Salesforce is down 31%
|
| And so on. The air also continues to leak out of the meme
| garbage stocks.
| mstipetic wrote:
| Wow this is actually true. I have no idea how I'm only
| realizing this now
| adventured wrote:
| The tech media and media in general is intentionally not
| talking about it widely.
|
| For ~6-8 years there was 24/7 talk of: "is the bubble
| ending? when will it end?". Then the bubble actually ends
| and everybody stops talking about it - because it finally
| actually happened and that's a lot more terrifying than
| speculating on ifs and whens. Trillions of dollars in paper
| wealth are going to vanish. A lot of these hyper multiple
| tech stocks are about to enjoy a long stretch of
| compression with far lower to negative returns, in the
| style of the post Nasdaq bubble years.
| holoduke wrote:
| How secure is this? For example in the Netherlands creditcards
| are showing a secret number on the backside of the card. Let's
| say the app on the phone is altered and making pictures of the
| card once it swiped over. The phone can then collect all
| information to make a purchase. I would not trust somebodies
| phone to swipe my card over.
| johnwalkr wrote:
| This seems pretty nice for small retailers.
|
| Apple pay is not a big improvement on normal tap to pay, although
| it still feels cool 5 years later to pay for stuff using my
| watch. The gamechanger exceptions are:
|
| - Transit. I can use my watch/apple pay for transit in many
| cities. From experience, I have only used it in 2 cities. Slow
| and annoying in Vancouver, but much less annoying than the
| alternatives. In Japan, instant and more convenient than using my
| suica card or suica function of my phone. Back in 2016 I bought
| an Apple watch within hours of learning that it supported suica.
| The only slight inconvenience is that I prefer to wear my watch
| on my left hand, and the card reader at gates is always on the
| right.
|
| - Online commerce. Only twice have I had the good fortune of
| finding something I wanted to buy online available using apple
| pay. But wow, was it a good experience. No login[1], no entering
| my address or details. Just approve apple pay by fingerprint or
| faceid, confirm my address, and wait for the goods to arrive.
|
| [1] I have a common name, and an email address several dozen
| people think they own. Making a new account on any site/service
| is a nightmare. If I can even make an account, Logging in 1 year
| later is usually impossible because someone has tried to reset
| "their" password 50 times. Fixing an account on any service that
| profits from its users (eg venmo) is usually impossible. They
| won't cancel an account misusing my email so long as the
| transactions go through.
| pl0x wrote:
| snemvalts wrote:
| Context
| https://twitter.com/theryanking/status/1485784823641755648
| jve wrote:
| Some more context:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30066969
| tannedNerd wrote:
| Eh, the apple article explicitly says other platforms soon.
| With all of apples recent anti trust issues I expect that to be
| less than a month or two or they could be accused harming
| smaller companies again by favoring stripe.
| kache_ wrote:
| Out of the loop: the comment you're replying to is referring
| to the Bolt CEO claiming that Stripe is in cahoots with other
| organizations, particularly ycombinator & hnews to manipulate
| the perception of stripe.
|
| The reference to the mob is a play on the fact that the
| cofounders are Irish.
| akprasad wrote:
| n=1, but I don't have any mental association between "mob"
| and being Irish, and I don't feel comfortable reading that
| intent into the original tweets without stronger evidence.
| Grustaf wrote:
| no_wizard wrote:
| Perhaps I'm missing context here what do you mean by this one?
| Is there something about Stripe in this instance that's "mob"
| like?
| exhilaration wrote:
| He's (jokingly) referring to these complaints of favoritism
| by the CEO of a Stripe competitor:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30066969
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| YoungWeb wrote:
| Contactless payments are great but there are many intermediaries
| in 1 simple purchase in the current payment processing system. I
| would like to see digital payments evolve into true p2p
| transactions. Let me pass you my bits. I don't want to pass them
| to bob, jessica, then larry and then have larry pass you the
| bits.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| Hacker News is such a bizarre place.
|
| On the one hand, we have threads about how browsers are
| fingerprintable and some app is using telemetry and endless
| discussions on theoretical zero-knowledge protocols and the
| importance of cryptography and Snowden saying this and that that
| get voted up to the top.
|
| On the other hand, something like this comes up which is
| basically another step along the "no-one accepts cash" funnel and
| so now everything you ever buy with metadata is part of the borg.
| Like, you've literally deliberately introduced an MiTM.
|
| I don't get this blind spot. Paying with cash is literally the
| easiest thing I do to reduce my data trail.
| [deleted]
| AlexanderTheGr8 wrote:
| How long before some stores don't accept cash? How long before
| banks do a background check (taking weeks) before giving you
| cash?
| pomian wrote:
| Most Airlines quit accepting cash for on board purchases.
| "For our convenience"
| djhn wrote:
| Already happens. My local bike shop stopped accepting cash.
| dharmab wrote:
| Cashless businesses were appearing in NYC pre-pandemic until
| the city passed a law against them to preserve access for
| unbanked consumers. This law was criticized as it greatly
| increased the cost of starting a small business. Then the
| pandemic happened and cash usage declined further.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/nyregion/nyc-cashless-
| ban... - Note the date
| wmeredith wrote:
| > How long before some stores don't accept cash?
|
| This already happens. My closest NFL and MLB stadiums do not
| accept cash for anything inside the park.
| lkschubert8 wrote:
| The obvious answer is that the responders are two distinct
| subsets of hn users.
| izzydata wrote:
| I don't think it is a reflection of peoples opinions on things.
| If it is tech news then someone will post it.
| mcbutterbunz wrote:
| The truly bizarre/interesting part of all of this is how we
| assume users of a website to be of the same opinion on most
| topics.
| dang wrote:
| Most of these paradoxes come from treating the community as if
| it were a person, which it isn't. It's a statistical cloud of
| millions of people (and hundreds of thousands of commenters)
| with a complete spectrum of views. People can contradict
| themselves, but a statistical cloud can't.
| Blindnoplan wrote:
| Most people dont care enough, even on here I would assume, to
| be bothered by their data being out there and honestly same for
| me. Cash is annoying to handle a lot less sanitary than just
| holding your phone next to the merchants.
| runeks wrote:
| It's almost as if the people who upvote stuff differ in opinion
| on what is valuable and/or interesting
| [deleted]
| user3939382 wrote:
| There's apparently a lack of consensus which isn't surprising
| since I'm conflicted personally by these issues all the time:
| the tech itself is really cool, the practical effects and side
| effects often are not.
| dharmab wrote:
| It's as if there are many different people who use the
| internet.
|
| I personally like using a credit card because it creates a data
| trail I can use to review my spending and budgets.
| jdgoesmarching wrote:
| I must have missed when we all voted on only using cash. It's
| like security bro veganism.
| timeon wrote:
| Speaking about 'bro' culture - seems like there is always
| opportunity to bash veganism.
| websap wrote:
| Carrying cash comes with inherent risks.
| Hakashiro wrote:
| And Apple Pay is much harder to trace (except for Apple and
| your bank I guess?) than just using a plastic static card.
|
| I can't count the amount of times I've lost or been robbed
| physical bills. Never once have money siphoned out of my
| online bank. I don't use cash anymore, I'm all digital, and
| still use a VPN to watch porn.
|
| Turns out different people have different threat models. My
| threat model includes my neighbour, my ISP (to a certain
| extent), my employer (again, to a certain extent), private
| companies like Google or Facebook, burglars, thieves, and
| scammers.
|
| It doesn't include the NSA, the government, the NSO group,
| banks, or North Korean government-sponsored hackers. If you
| think you can defend yourself against the NSA, lol. Good
| luck.
| manquer wrote:
| Threat model should include banks , credit scores and
| spending patterns of credit cards is the foundation of
| credit worthiness in this country .
|
| For example, your credit score is penalized if your have
| high utilization on your card doesn't matter if you never
| default on a payment, Low credit score results in low
| limits in turn keeps utilization high.
|
| Bank knowing I defaulted on a card as a risk parameter is
| one thing, them knowing how much I spend every month and
| likely on what line items is not ideal when they can
| control a lot of your life.
|
| Bad credit score can mean high interest rates , higher down
| payments rejected for loans that can have major impact on
| your life.
|
| It is also likely bank or payment processors can indirectly
| sell our buying patterns for targeting ads.
| snotrockets wrote:
| Those are highly regulated, regarding which data they can
| or can not use, and that regulation is (surprisingly?)
| very consumer friendly. There's more of a risk of a CRA
| getting hacked and their collected data being sold
| manquer wrote:
| The advise I have always given is you must have credit
| history to apply for any sort of loan. To get a good
| history apply for a credit card even if you don't need
| one and use it, but no so much that your utilization is
| too high that will reduce your score. Merely apply for a
| loan your credit score goes down just cause you applied!.
| How is this consumer friendly ?
|
| It would be one thing if Credit Score for a government
| run central thing, couple of private companies having all
| your spending data without your consent at all seems
| major invasion of privacy.
|
| Scoring methodology depends on sharing my private
| spending data to others, data that I cannot control being
| resold or have full visibility into its use. CRAs will
| try to charge you to "freeze" your credit or even see
| your own data!.
|
| This is extremely anti-consumer, CRA industry did not
| develop for consumers or their protection, it is merely a
| tool for businesses to improve their operations.
|
| Imagine if FB had a "social credit" and that is now used
| every social gathering as an eligibility criteria, and
| Facebook charged you to see your own data, that is how
| the current system feels.
| wyager wrote:
| Payment digitization is inevitable. The benefits outweighs the
| costs for 95% of people. The realistic options are payment
| through dystopian surveillance apparatus payment processors, or
| payment through bitcoin lightning (or similar).
| ska wrote:
| It's hard to imagine a plausible path to payment digitization
| without states asserting a) currency controls and b) some
| degree of visibility on transactions. I think on the latter
| they'll take a "well if anyone can see it, we should be able
| to " and "KYC is needed" etc. stance. The only way to avoid
| anyone seeing it will defeat (a) an not be acceptable to
| them. This would relegate to same status as any other black
| market, with better/broader tech.
| MikeKusold wrote:
| Paying with your phone is actually more secure than the old
| mag-swipe method. Your phone will tokenize your credit card
| information, which makes it significantly harder to track
| credit card usage across various merchants.
|
| Of course it isn't as private as cash, but it is a step forward
| from mag-swipe.
|
| Square has a good explainer if you want to read more:
| https://squareup.com/us/en/townsquare/what-does-tokenization...
| stavros wrote:
| Harder for whom? The attack vector here isn't "hackers
| compromised everyone and can correlate your data", it's "Visa
| knows everything about you".
|
| I agree with the GP, this is a huge privacy blind spot.
| ska wrote:
| > The attack vector here isn't
|
| There are multiple attack vectors. One of them is "why did
| I just get another charge from that place we visited last
| June". Another being "oops, we plugged our pin into a
| skimmer", etc.
|
| Agree that letting Visa/MC/whomever know everything about
| your transactions is a choice...
|
| Otoh if they pay you 3ish % for it, you might decide you're
| more than happy to.
| stavros wrote:
| I have half a mind to make a debit card that lets you
| whitelist merchants. You use the same card everywhere,
| but unless the merchant is in the whitelist, the charge
| fails. Also, you can set limits and rules.
|
| Basically like privacy.com, but why use a new card per
| merchant?
| [deleted]
| bagacrap wrote:
| hackers need not apply. I'm sure retailers will happily
| sell your transaction data to a third party aggregator, and
| that transaction data is more fine grained than what Visa
| gets to know about you (spending at Walmart vs specifically
| buying diapers).
|
| So now Apple gets to know what Visa knows. Still, for the
| time being, they don't seem to know individual items. And
| many here seem to think Apple is more trustworthy than
| random anonymous data broker.
| praseodym wrote:
| Apple Pay only tokenizes card information once when the card
| is added to the Apple Wallet on a device, not for every
| transaction. This means that usage for an on-device tokenized
| card can still be tracked until the card is removed and re-
| added.
| dhritzkiv wrote:
| I believe while the token is generated once, each
| transaction is signed with a unique signature (I believe
| that's the term) that only the payment processor can
| decipher. The merchant doesn't get any stable/identifiable
| information that can be used to track you across
| purchases/sessions/stores.
| lxgr wrote:
| No, the merchant still does get a stable identifier with
| every payment (the "device account number").
|
| More recently, an additional identifier uniquely
| identifying the underlying card has also been added [1].
| That one persists even across multiple devices and token
| deletions.
|
| [1] https://www.level2kernel.com/payment_account_referenc
| e.html
| dhritzkiv wrote:
| Interesting! I stand corrected. Thanks.
| ninkendo wrote:
| A signature doesn't hide information, it only tells you
| that it hasn't been modified. All the information that's
| being signed is by definition already in the payload
| given to the merchant.
|
| If it's actually encrypting information (not just signing
| it), then that's another thing entirely, but signatures
| don't hide data.
| dhritzkiv wrote:
| Good point about a signature not hiding the data. I got
| my terminology mixed up. I thought it was encoding it in
| a way so that only the payment processor could see.
|
| But that's not necessarily the case either, as somebody
| else brought up the fact that identifiers ARE in fact
| passed to the merchant.
| imnotrick wrote:
| I think you can also tap a button in the Wallet app that
| lets you generate a new token
| lxgr wrote:
| Are you possibly mixing this up with the Apple Card
| "request new card number" feature? In general, creating a
| new token requires deleting and re-adding a card.
| dathinab wrote:
| > secure than the old mag-swipe
|
| Though at least in the EU the mag-swipe method was phased out
| and replaced with a chip based method years ago. (A chip with
| secure module, requiring PIN if you pay for more then a small
| amount, or otherwise unusual.)
|
| And as far as I know that method is still more secure then
| Apple pay and similar.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I don't want to reduce my data trail, as I don't believe there
| are meaningful risks associated with creating one.
| mritzmann wrote:
| I love the fact that both are represented on HN and yet there
| is - in most cases - a great disscussion culture.
| ska wrote:
| > Paying with cash is literally the easiest thing I do to
| reduce my data trail.
|
| Sure, if you prioritize anonymity in your transactions over
| convenience cash is much better.
|
| OTOH, contactless pay with your phone is so much better than
| handing your card to a random server to make an imprint or
| whatever - and more secure/privacy maintaining than using the
| card itself if done right.
|
| It's not a binary decision.
| matthewaveryusa wrote:
| Does anyone have a doc with the specifics of how tap-to-pay
| works? Specifically, what happens when mulitple individuals are
| in proximity? I imagine there's a payment request broadcast
| followed by a payment allow response, followed by the broadcaster
| sending a subsequent request message to a selected payment
| response? I'm curious about the specifics and what kind of clever
| things the protocol has to maximize security and minimize DoS,
| and what kind of information is transmitted on each leg of the
| protocol
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