Apple Pay's security is impressive - but that won't stop the hackers trying
The world turned up to Apple’s launch event this week for news of the new iPhone 6, but CEO Tim Cook ended up showing them something that could turn out to be more important than another smartphone. “Payments are broken,” he said announcing the broad details of Apple Pay, the firm’s entry into the world of contactless payments.
The scope of this ‘broken’ market is vast, the complexities considerable if surmountable, the potential for profits from a billion consumers buying things – Apple will get its cut of every transaction – in theory pretty sizable over time. Cleverly, the company said it wouldn’t levy these fees from the customers or merchants (who might pass that on to consumers) but from banks. We still don’t know how much this will be which suggests that it will be modest and depend on scale to make money. We don’t even know whether the banks are happy about this.
