How Apple Pay could make the Target and Home Depot breaches a thing of the past
The launch of Apple’s mobile payment system could prove a turning point in the battle to secure your debit and credit card information from hackers.
Tens of millions of card numbers have been stolen in the last few months from malware-infected payment terminals in stores including Target and Home Depot. The thefts were possible in part because the card information gets stored in an unencrypted form inside the terminals.
Apple announced a system this week, one that uses a payment standard based on NFC technology. When users of its new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus smartphones walk into a store, they’ll be able to wave their phone over an NFC reader to complete a purchase.
The system, which relies in part on Apple’s Touch ID biometric technology to verify the user’s identity, could finally replace a payment technology that’s been in use for five decades.