Apple Watch

[AndyClift]

Here in Uk we have had Contactless Payment for a few years. Also in London the transport system started with its own contactless cards and now it accepts all cards. In fact it is the only way to pay on buses and tube trains. Cash is NOT accepted any more. That's the background.

Now the problem. I and many others have debit and credit cards that are all contactless plus a free travel pass for London public transport which is contactless (I am rather old). Stick all these in a wallet together and have wallet near a contactless terminal and any one of them could be paying. On London transport I need to keep my FREE card away from others or the terminal may pick the wrong card and take money. If I lose any of these cards the finder can use them almost anywhere as there is NO security on the cards, i.e. pin number.

Enter Apple Pay. When I use my watch to pay nothing can happen until I double press the button on my watch. I can keep the watch next to a terminal all day but no money is taken without me pressing the button. if I take my watch off my wrist or lose it then Apple Pay will not work without it going back on my wrist and entering my pin. If I use my phone to pay nothing happens without my finger on the button and if I lose it the finder's finger will not work. I used to keep my free transport pass in my phone case and just flash the case in front of the terminal on the buses. I forgot about Apple Pay and flashed my pass as usual but the terminal would not accept it. Then I realised that the terminal had picked up my phone and not the pass but could not proceed without my finger. That would not have happened with a contactless card. It would just have taken the money.

I am not stupid enough to believe that Apple Pay offers absolute security. When UK introduced "Chip and Pin" cards that required a pin number we were told that it was the end of card fraud. For a while fraud dropped but then the criminals found ways around it and my cards have been cloned twice. Now we have Apple Pay and I guess that at some time the criminals will manage to break the security but for now it is a very secure and (with the watch particularly) a very quick, safe and convenient way to pay.

I love it.

 

[IWT]

Andy

Excellent points, well made. I use special "electronic blocking" cards in my wallet to prevent accidental contactless payment. I can't think of a better word for these, but they are the same size & thickness as a normal card and work by preventing any of my cards from being accessed, by blocking signal access. Where I live now, I don't have any of your London problems I'm glad to say.

Ian

 

[lclev]

I find Andy's post very interesting as it is a "foreign" concept to me. We are still debating the need for a bus in our largest town and taxis are a non-existent. We definitely move at a slower pace here.

Living in rural America, contactless payment is slowly creeping in. My Capital One credit card is attached to Apple Pay but my local bank debit card does not offer contactless anything. About two years ago the one server that runs their debit card charges crashed and everyone's card's were declined!

I do like the Apple Pay concept but even though I have it set up, I have yet to use it. But, I think I will invest in RFID blocking sleeves for my credit cards (all two of them.) It is a cheap investment and occasionally I take a trip to the "big" city and you never know who you will run into in the "out world."

Lisa

 

[chscag]

Very interesting and informative post by Andy. It goes to show how "far behind" we are here in the US with contactless pay or for that matter chip embedded cards. Maybe Apple Pay will be the way to go and be secure for awhile, but like Andy stated above it may just be a matter of time before the hackers learn how to get around the security it offers. For now, I will forgo using Apple Pay.

 

[chas_m]

While nobody can ever rule out the possibility of a problem with Apple Pay (particularly on the bank end of things), the system itself is so much more secure than any other system in use that the possibility of a problem originating with Apple Pay itself is about as likely as a sudden outbreak of actual viruses for OS X. Among other features that posters here may not be fully aware of:

1. Your credit card number is not stored on the device. Even if you lost the iPhone, even if someone were to crack the secure enclave, they cannot obtain your CC number, since it simply isn't there.
2. The entire system relies on your fingerprint. Again, not impossible to get around, but ... come on, how realistic is this? It's certainly more secure than your cards, which anyone can steal or copy easily.
3. There's a limit on how much can be spent using Apple Pay. Currently in the UK it's £20, it varies in the US but it is likely something south of $100.
4. The entire transaction -- every single part of it -- is encrypted. This is far more than you can say for your credit or debit card transaction now.
5. A token -- not any usable numbers -- is sent to the bank for verification. Even if this were both intercepted and unencrypted, it would still be useless information, since each token is randomized, and expired with every session.
6. The hardware security of the secure enclave is far stronger than any software encryption and needless to say far more secure than the printed numbers and magnetic information on your cards.

In short, Apple Pay security is not something you should be worried about (and I would expect this applies to Google Wallet, or Android Pay, or even Samsung Pay) ... at least not in comparison to the security of whatever you're using now.

 

[RustProofCorn]

Even if Apple Pay is secure its a PITA to use. I tried to use it and like it... I really did.. However for me until its more of a standard trying to find out the companies that do and don't have it is way to cumbersome. Good ole 10 bucks in the sock or debit is good enough for me.

 

[IWT]

I agree with all that Chas has said regarding security - and incidentally, since September 1st, the limit in the UK has gone up to £30. As Andy has stated in his comprehensive review, contactless cards are in wide usage in the UK and have been for several years, necessitating additional protective actions by consumers to prevent unintended transactions being debited from their card. As I said above, I use electronic blocking cards in my wallet to forestall this. So Apple Pay, whether by iPhone or Apple Watch, has huge advantages particularly in a large city environment.

But there are frustrations for sure and these have little or nothing to do with Apple, but with the infrastructure, or lack of it, in the smaller cities, towns and, of course, villages. I sympathise with rpc #165; it is often easier and quicker to pay in cash or use your chip-and-pin card in the conventional way than struggle to determine, yet again, from an uninterested shop assistant whether they do or do not offer Apple Pay.

But all this set to change and Apple Pay will become standard procedure in the near future. When established more widely in my area, I shall use it via my iPhone as I don't intend to buy the Watch. It would be great, for example, in petrol (gas) stations as you can get a reasonable fill up of petrol (gas) for £30. A lot more in the US, I guess, as it's so much cheaper there.

Ian

 

[dbm]

It would be great, for example, in petrol (gas) stations as you can get a reasonable fill up of petrol (gas) for £30. A lot more in the US, I guess, as it's so much cheaper there.

Ian

Shell has just implemented a scheme where you can pay for petrol using their app and a QR code on the pump - this is pretty futuristic stuff! The system even automatically authorises the pump to start delivering.

 

[chas_m]

An app and a QR code?? How ... quaint.

Paying for stuff with my Apple Watch, now that's futuristic. I can even do this up here in Canada, since I have a US-based card I can use. Most merchants around here have contactless terminals, so I just touch the lower button on the Watch twice, and turn it to face the terminal, and literally less than a second later I have paid. It works just like contactless cards in terms of the time it takes, but of course you don't have to fish around for the card.

This is, to put mildly, considerably faster than pulling out the wallet, getting the correct card out, sticking it in the machine, waiting, putting in the PIN code, waiting for approval, put the card away, sign the form, and wait for my receipt. Or even using the "chipless" US card that I now have on my Watch, for that matter. You don't even need to pull out the iPhone, or hold the Touch ID!

Going broke spending money has never been so cool!

 

[Nighthawk4]

Only tried once so far with the Watch. However, it is great using the iPhone for payments.

Each morning in Costa Coffee, I use the Costa App for the points, switch to the ApplePay App and pay for it - all with the the iPhone and no need to search for my wallet.

Also, next week we get WatchOS2 - looks good in theory

 

[dbm]

An app and a QR code?? How ... quaint.

Paying for stuff with my Apple Watch, now that's futuristic.

We have Chip & PIN EFTPOS at many petrol stations here in the UK. Sometimes it is your only way to pay outside of core hours. But I can't see them moving to Contactless EFTPOS unless there is a massive adoption of ApplePay or similar technologies since most Contactless payments are limited to £30, which is woefully insufficient for filling your car with petrol or diesel.

So QR codes for EFTPOS including pump authorisation (i.e. fully automated) is as good as it will get for a long time in that space.

For other applications I agree that ApplePay is way ahead.

 

[chas_m]

Yes, I meant the "quaint" remark as a smiley, you're completely right that it's still better than nothing, and being in the UK you do have that ridiculously low limit. Hopefully that will get raised to something better soon as banks become convinced of the security level.

 

["Rajbir1994 "]

I am still on my old iPhone 5. Don't think to upgrade it anyway. Happy to use it.

 

[chas_m]

The whole iPhone 5 family (yes, including the iPhone 5c) are just great smartphones in my opinion. Yes, the iPhone 6 is better in lots of ways, but ... some people don't need huge screens (that's what an iPad is for, or a notebook), some people find the iPhone 6 actually TOO thin (this is my wife's chief concern, as well!) and more prone to being dropped, it definitely feels more "slippery" to me, and of course while "bendgate" was a load of old toot, I think scientific tests have established that yes, the iPhone 6 does bend a bit more easily than the iPhone 5 class (but no more easily than similarly thin Android phones). So I'm delighted that they will keep the iPhone 5s around for at least another year.

 

[lclev]

My husband has the iPhone 5c - his first smartphone ever. It took me getting fed up with his flip phones always dropping calls to get him on one. He loves it. It is the perfect size for him to slip it into his shirt or pants pocket and it never drops a call. So he will probably have it until it dies of natural causes.

And then there is me. My last phone was a Note II. The iPhone 6+ is about the same size and weighs less. I like the larger size. I can, in a pinch, see the screen without my glasses.

I do believe Apple needs to keep the size options. I just hope they don't get the smaller size too big. With a protective case, I think it still needs to slip in a pocket easily. After all the primary purpose of it is to be a phone for calls. Today's phone has become an entertainment system and sadly that is not always a good thing.

Lisa

 

[dbm]

Yes, I meant the "quaint" remark as a smiley

I know, and took it that way

Re the thinness of phones I think it is worth factoring in the cases, too. My 6 with an Apple case is comparable to a naked 5 and well protected to boot.

 

[dbm]

Just ordered a 6S as I was due an upgrade. The new camera tech looks pretty sweet, although I'm not convinced about the Live pictures..

 

[Rod]

Lisa I'm with you. As usual I'm a little behind the times I bought the 5S just as the 6+ was released and currently I'm dictating this thread because I decided to give it another try. I realise it's been around for a while but I sort of gave up on it in Mavericks because it simply didn't work very well. I recently picked up Chas_M on a typo which suggested that he was using dictation. Funny how you forget things are even there sometimes. Sure enough he was using dictation so I was motivated to give it ago again and this is the result. Pretty good really. Perhaps I will persevere a little longer with it this time.

 

[lclev]

I use dictation all the time on my watch. I never think of it when I have my phone. But when a text comes in, I just hit the microphone icon and talk away. I have had dictation fail if I am in a low service area but, for the most part it is very reliable and accurate.

I am going to have to rely on it a lot after Sept. 30th. I will be having hand surgery - arthritic joint repair and carpal tunnel repair. So I will see how well I can get along with using dictation. One handed typing is not that easy.

Lisa

 

[chas_m]

Sorry to hear about the surgery, hope it goes well and you're on the mend soon! Yes, I use dictation on my Apple Watch now too, and am generally pleased with how good/useful it is.