Apple Pay’s security is still untested

Apple’s new mobile payments system, Apple Pay, is being hailed as a game-changer — a new way to pay that will be quickly embraced by consumers and save retailers the headache and expense of break-ins into credit card-based systems. But will it? asks Retail Dive.

All mobile payment systems, including Apple Pay, Google Wallet, Softcard and CurrentC, a new non-NFC payment system developed by a consortium of retailers, tout the almost-magical ease of using their virtual wallets to make a purchase, but convenience is not consumers’ biggest worry. Security concerns about mobile payments are a major reason why they’ve been adopted so slowly.

Some experts say mobile payments are indeed more secure than old-fashioned credit cards: They use various combinations of encryption, one-time-use codes, and layers of authentication not possible when swiping a plastic card. With Apple Pay, financial information is not stored on the phone, so the security risk shifts to banks or card issuers and how they store the data.

But banks themselves are increasingly using the cloud to store data, and it’s unclear how well anyone in charge there understands what it may take to manage its security risks. So while experts say the security of mobile payments — including Apple Pay — has come along way, it remains untested.