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Apple unveils contactless payments via Tap to Pay on iPhone

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Re: Apple unveils contactless payments via Tap to Pay on iPhone

#321

Post by jon889 »

NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #274
0xy wrote: post #257

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.

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.

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)

Re: Apple unveils contactless payments via Tap to Pay on iPhone

#322

Post by fhood »

rustyminnow wrote: post #232
profmonocle wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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!

Me neither, my first encounter with it was 3 or 4 years ago at a backpacking shelter in Iceland.

Re: Apple unveils contactless payments via Tap to Pay on iPhone

#323

Post by adventured »

0xy wrote: post #257

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.

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.

Re: Apple unveils contactless payments via Tap to Pay on iPhone

#324

Post by ska »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #224

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" funne…

> 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.

Re: Apple unveils contactless payments via Tap to Pay on iPhone

#325

Post by digisign »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #292
cromka wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

A potentially malicious third-party selling your financial transaction history is not the best choice... by far.

Re: Apple unveils contactless payments via Tap to Pay on iPhone

#326

Post by munk-a »

profmonocle wrote: post #209
melling wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

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…

> 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.

Re: Apple unveils contactless payments via Tap to Pay on iPhone

#328

Post by dkonofalski »

otterley wrote: post #269
dkonofalski wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Walmart and Home Depot seem to be major holdouts in the U.S. I wonder what they’re waiting for.

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.

Re: Apple unveils contactless payments via Tap to Pay on iPhone

#329

Post by dkonofalski »

joshgachnang wrote: post #132
dkonofalski wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Apple unveils contactless payments via Tap to Pay on iPhone

#330

Post by ska »

stavros wrote: post #298
MikeKusold wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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.

> 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.

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