Apple unveils contactless payments via Tap to Pay on iPhone • Hacker News Board

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

#341

Post by queuebert » Tue, Feb 08, 2022, 6:00 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #27

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…

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.

And even when I pay cash, I just throw it at them and run, so no contact there either.

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

#342

Post by munk-a » Tue, Feb 08, 2022, 6:00 PM UTC

tluyben2 wrote: post #91

jacquesm wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU has contactless paying for a while now, but it uses a chip embedded in the bank card.

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.

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.

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

#343

Post by timeon » Tue, Feb 08, 2022, 6:00 PM UTC

jdgoesmarching wrote: post #314

dharmab wrote: post #241

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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.

I must have missed when we all voted on only using cash. It’s like security bro veganism.

Speaking about 'bro' culture - seems like there is always opportunity to bash veganism.

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

#344

Post by josephg » Tue, Feb 08, 2022, 6:02 PM UTC

jon-wood wrote: post #268

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…

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.

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.

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

#345

Post by tiffanyh » Tue, Feb 08, 2022, 6:02 PM UTC

judge2020 wrote: post #302

tiffanyh wrote: post #86

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.

> 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…

> "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.

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

#346

Post by scrollaway » Tue, Feb 08, 2022, 6:03 PM UTC

munk-a wrote: post #326

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…

> 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 di…

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.

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

#347

Post by snotrockets » Tue, Feb 08, 2022, 6:04 PM UTC

sithadmin wrote: post #231

tut-urut-utut wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't see what's so revolutionary about this. Why would anyone shell out multiple hundreds of € 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 €, and it can also print the bill. The cheapest that does the job is a mere 20 €.

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, whic…

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)

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

#348

Post by VicVee » Tue, Feb 08, 2022, 6:05 PM UTC

skeeter2020 wrote: post #89

yuuu wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>> 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?

Reads like a real reddit post from 2009

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

#349

Post by gtk40 » Tue, Feb 08, 2022, 6:05 PM UTC

dkonofalski wrote: post #123

danShumway wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

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

#350

Post by throwaway22032 » Tue, Feb 08, 2022, 6:05 PM UTC

dkonofalski wrote: post #301

throwaway22032 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

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.

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.