Scammers Taking Advantage of Apple Pay

• By Matt Holden
• Mar 03, 2015

Scammers have figured out ways to manipulate Apple Pay, allowing criminals to use the platform to buy items with stolen identities and credit cards, according to a report.

“The crooks have not broken the secure encryption around Apple Pay’s fingerprint-activated wireless payment mechanism,” says Charles Arthur of The Guardian “Instead, they are setting up new iPhones with stolen personal information, and then calling banks to ‘provision’ the victim’s card on the phone to use it to buy goods. Criminals with the stolen IDs are understood to have targeted Apple Stores in particular because they both accept Apple Pay and offer high-value items, which can then be sold on for cash.”

Apple has responded, saying this is a problem on the banks’ end given that Apple Pay requires banks to verify each card and approve whether or not a card can be added to Apple Pay.

Banks are looking to implement better verification and checking systems to prevent this from occurring going forward. The secure encryption of Apple Pay has yet to be broken.

Tim Sloane, vice president of payments innovation at the Massachusetts-based financial consultancy Mercator Group, said: “These are probably just some teething problems. If the banks can nail down the authentication, they should see less fraud on Apple Pay,” and added: “Battle plans always look great until you meet the enemy.”