Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple unveils contactless payments via Tap to Pay on iPhone

apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 736 posts

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

#431

Post by dhritzkiv »

ninkendo wrote: post #419
dhritzkiv wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

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

#432

Post by dang »

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…

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.

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

#433

Post by adventured »

mstipetic wrote: post #421
adventured wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 4…

Wow this is actually true. I have no idea how I'm only realizing this now

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.

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

#434

Post by kingcharles »

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.

They at least move some small retail owners from Android to iPhone, so they'll sell some iPhones.

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

#435

Post by techsupporter »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #262
throwaway894345 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

> 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.

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

#436

Post by BenjiWiebe »

rootusrootus wrote: post #311
hunter2_ wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tipp…

> 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.

No, actually the law allows for below-minimum hourly wages for tipped jobs. That's the whole issue...

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

#437

Post by echelon »

sithadmin wrote: post #381
snotrockets wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

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).

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.

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

#439

Post by KoftaBob »

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.

If "bps" is supposed to stand for basis points, then you're saying they get a 0.15% cut?

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

#440

Post by throwawayboise »

Pxtl wrote: post #320
jermaustin1 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.
Post reply on HN