Apple Pay

When announcing Apple Pay last month, Apple showed off a list of launch partners that would be putting the NFC-powered iPhone payment system to work in October, including McDonald’s, Nike, and Macy’s. However, the Daily Dot has compiled a list of businesses that don’t currently have plans to adopt Apple’s mobile payment system, and there are some notable entries on the list.

Of course, it doesn’t seem unexpected that many businesses that didn’t have early access to the hardware and software that makes up Apple Pay would be without current plans to adopt the technology. Many of the companies gave a “non-statement,” so to speak, confirming that they are considering the possibility of implementing the system in the future but don’t currently have a date set to roll it out.

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It’s happening: Apple has just announced a keynote address for Thursday, October 16th to take place at the Town Hall auditorium on its Infinite Loop Campus in Cupertino, California. Invitations to select members of the media and special guests indicate that the event will, as always, begin at 10 AM Pacific time/1 PM Eastern Time. News of the October 16th date broke last week. We’ll be providing full, live coverage on 9to5Mac.com of the event’s proceedings. Here’s everything we’re expecting Apple to discuss at the event:

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Just in case there hadn’t already been enough evidence of Apple Pay support coming to the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in the iOS 8.1 update, the second beta of the operating system, which was released earlier today, contains the setup screen for the system. The change isn’t visible to most users right now, but Hamad Sood been able to make it appear:

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Starting with iOS 5 in 2011, Apple has released a major new iOS version each fall and a notable follow-up update early in the following year. For example, iOS 6 launched in September 2012 and was updated to iOS 6.1 in January, and iOS 7, which was launched in September 2013, was updated to iOS 7.1 with CarPlay and interface improvements in March 2014. But starting with the recently released iOS 8, it appears that Apple has a different development schedule for 2015 and perhaps beyond. According to sources, Apple is already hard at work on three major follow-up versions to iOS 8: iOS 8.1, iOS 8.2, and iOS 8.3.

iOS 8.2 visits to 9to5Mac

We’ve confirmed that these major new versions are in development via two means. First, a developer of a major hardware-connected iOS application has shared with us their analytics, and this data indicates that all three versions are in testing by Apple employees in or around Cupertino, California. Second, and much closer to home, our own Google Analytics for 9to5Mac.com show that iOS users are visiting our website via iOS 8.1, iOS 8.2, and iOS 8.3 devices. iOS 8.1 hits to 9to5Mac.com started appearing even months before iOS 8.0 launched, but 8.2 and 8.3 visits only started picking up following iOS 8’s release in mid-September.

iOS 8.3 visits to 9to5Mac

While Apple works on several iOS features and enhancements over the course of several years, it typically only begins wholly testing major new releases close to the ship dates of the preceding release. Apple working on three significant follow-ups to iOS 8 is a shift from the usual development cycle, one which would normally indicate Apple to be working on just iOS 8.1 as well as iOS 9.0. It’s possible that iOS 9 is also in the works, and of course Apple is always working on nominal bug fix (x.x.1 or .2 or .3) updates, but the fact that 8.1, 8.2, and 8.3 are all in simultaneous development raises some interesting possibilities:

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You may recall that the Touch ID sensor was successfully hacked last year, using a technique where fingerprints were lifted from the phone’s casing followed by sophisticated lab techniques used to create artificial copies of the print to activate the sensor.

The bad news is that the sensor in the iPhone 6 is vulnerable to the same methods – the good news is that security researcher Marc Rogers found the iPhone 6 version to be both more secure and more reliable … 
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PayPal appears to be calling out Apple and its newly announced mobile payment service Apple Pay with an ad appearing in The New York Times print edition (via Pando Daily) indirectly reminding people of last month’s disastrous iCloud photo leak when a list of celebrities found their personal photos an intimate situations published on the web. The ad reads “We the people want our money safer than our selfies,” but PayPal isn’t without its own security issue in the past.

Apple already has over 500 million iTunes account with most having credit cards, the company says, and iCloud features like iCloud Keychain manage and utilize credit card data for auto-completing credit card information.
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Ahead of Apple’s entry into the mobile payment space next month with the release of Apple Pay for iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus users, Apple has joined the GlobalPlatform, the non-profit association focused on standards for secure chip technology across various industries, as a full member.

Existing members of GlobalPlatform include various Apple partners and competitors alike with carriers AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon being members as well as handset makers Samsung and BlackBerry. More importantly, Apple Pay partners American Express, MasterCard, and Visa are also members; Discover, which is not yet an Apple Pay partner but has said it is discussions over participation with Apple, is also a member.
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While we’d all expected plastic bank cards to be replaced by apps eventually, the CEO of mobile banking startup Moven is suggesting that Apple’s backing could mean the end of physical bank cards within 2-3 years.

The additional sweetners here are three fold. Firstly, tokenization will avoid much of the type of breaches we’ve seen at Target and Home Depot because the token is only a one-time use thing. Secondly, the move to tokens and the combination of biometrics, etc allow for the emergence of a ‘cardholder present’ approach to interchange rates that will potentially give mobile payments a competitive merchant rate. Lastly, the US might effectively jump straight from magstripe to mobile, especially if issuers can figure out how to reduce the cost of card replacement by moving straight to mobile SE and tokens …

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The first half of the Tim Cook interview with Charlie Rose is now available to watch — in full — on the CharlieRose.com website. Cook discusses the thinking behind the Watch, purchasing Beats, partnering with IBM, how he and Steve Jobs discussed Cook becoming CEO and much more. Bitesize highlights were posted a few days ago. The video is embedded below, although may not be available to view in all countries.

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Big-name analysts seemed satisfied with what they saw and heard during Apple’s launch of the iPhone 6, Apple Watch and Apple Pay, reports Forbes. Summarising investor notes from a dozen major companies, Chuck Jones found the general feeling was that Apple had delivered what was expected.

The overall average of AAPL stock price targets was $109, against the current price of just over $100. Analysts pointed to a range of factors in forming their views, among them … 
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A couple of reports yesterday and today have highlighted a little tidbit of information many have been wondering about the upcoming Apple Watch: How will the device make sure payments via Apple Pay are secure? Both the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus have the convenient Touch ID sensor to validate that your purchases are indeed being done by you, but new information suggests that the Apple Watch is going to accomplish this security in a slightly different way…

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Discover has tweeted that its cards will be joining Amex, Mastercard and Visa in the Apple Pay service, allowing electronic versions of its cards to be stored in Passbook for contactless payment using the iPhone 6 and Apple Watch.

[tweet https://twitter.com/discover/status/509405306531876865]

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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I9MbIrlEUw]

After launching its new mobile wallet service Apple Pay during yesterday’s keynote, the company gave demos afterwards, TechCrunch sharing a video.

The card you have registered with your Apple ID becomes your default card, but you can add others by using the camera on the iPhone 6 to identify it. The iPhone requests permission from your bank, and the card is then added to Passbook … 
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An SEC filing reveals that six of Apple’s top execs were each awarded 35,000 Restricted Stock Units (shares that cannot be immediately traded), with a current value of more than $19M. Of this, $12M is awarded outright, subject only to remaining with the company until at least April 2018, with a further $7M dependent on Apple’s stock performance.

The bonuses were awarded to Senior VPs Eddy Cue, Craig Federighi, Dan Riccio, Phil Schiller, Bruce Sewell and Jeffrey Williams. It’s likely that Jony Ive will receive the same, though his stock awards do not have to be reported to the SEC … 
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Senior VP of Technologies Bob Mansfield (Photo: Apple)

Bloomerg reports that four out of the five highest-rewarded execs in Standard & Poor’s top 500 companies are Apple execs. In all four cases, their base salaries are a relatively modest $805,400, with the balance paid in stock options.

The four Apple employees are Bob Mansfield, Senior VP of Technologies ($85.5m); Bruce Sewell, Apple’s lead lawyer ($69m); Jeffrey Williams, Senior VP of Operations ($68.7m); and Peter Oppenheimer, Chief Financial Officer ($68.6m) …
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