In reply to Mark C. Danzig.

Nope. They hold all the cards here. Most merchants can't survive without accepting credit cards, so they have to play ball - the same way Apple will have to play ball if they want to keep Apple Pay alive. If they can't figure out a way to abate some of the fraud from their end, they will likely lose their sweetheart discount rate. Granted, this is Apple we are talking about, so their tremendous potential volume gives them some pull here, but they will still need to figure out some additional provisions to sniff out some of the fraud and minimize the exposure of the card issuing banks when they agree to provision a card. For starters, they could make Apple Pay work within a defined radius of the billing zip code only. Users who want to use it when they travel would have to get a temporary authorization.