Actually a nineteen digit number security system is pretty robust. What has evolved around it is a sort of fire alarm and fire sprinkler system. When a breach happens the system springs into action to minimize the severity of the damage. And the losses are minimized and written off.
What Apple is touting is a new system they say ‘prevents’ security breaches. And it does not. In fact it inadvertently assists hackers once they break in by keeping the break-in hidden and difficult to detect.
So the networks will ask why should they invest in this new local token scheme security when in fact it is so easily defeated. The risk-reward is not worth replacing the current system which works well enough as-is for the network operators, banks and card providers to make nice profits.
Sorry but I think Apple is hyping its Apple Pay to an image of invincibility and exclusive must-have, and they will fail badly in the next 2 years with it. I have been involved in R&D for more than 30 years and have served a principal investigator advisor to Venture Capital Firms, Hedge Firms and Academic Advisory Boards for hundreds and hundreds of startups and incubators.
I have a simple slide that I think over time has become an observation that should be in every person’s thought inventory. And that is for every 1000 inventions proposed, possibly only 1 or 2 will find commercial success. It is a profound observation because many of the scientists and engineers behind innovations that fail are the cream of the crop and their ideas and inventions are astounding until they are injected into commerce and then they fail miserably. I have example after example, hundreds of examples of ‘sure things’ that went wrong.
Your claim literally denies reality, Hostage. The major Creditcard companies with the sole exception of Discover which is a subsidiary of Sears Holdings, a backer of CurrentC, and most of the major banks you say won't make the investment have already agreed to make the investment and they have already deployed it. Sorry. You lose again. It's already in place. It's called NFC. AGAIN, you are making yourself look foolish.
So far, you are the only one I see claiming it is easily defeated. Please prove you allegation before continuing with your lies.
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“for every 1000 inventions proposed, possibly only 1 or 2 will find commercial success.”
A company which has achieved a 1/3 trillion dollar market cap value, with a hardware product lineup which occupies no more than a small desk, has a clue about how to make high-profile high-stakes systems work.
The current risk-reward for CC infrastructure is highly problematic. The “robust” “fire alarm and sprinkler’ system isn’t acceptable at the current rate of breaches, leaving most cards with a stench of lingering smoke and wet carpet along with higher long-term costs of covering what losses do happen. Customers don’t want a CC system featuring “here’s a new card, you’re not liable for anything” every couple years, they want a CC system featuring no breaches ... and Apple Pay currently has no breaches. Yes, there are theories of how it can be breached, and yes, it hasn’t been out for more than a few days (ironically, MCX suffered a major breach during that period), but until you can show actual in-the-wild breaches occurring anywhere within a couple orders of magnitude of the frequency of CC and MCX breaches, don’t bother blathering about vapid handwaving disparagement.
As for your impressive background and capacity to identify winners, I have to wonder what _would_ convince you of a means to overhaul an existing electronic transaction infrastructure, and why that wouldn’t be a “more cash on hand than the US government” company producing tens of millions (and growing fast) of near-overnight adopter/customers with the backing of several-and-growing major banks on top of an existing system so ubiquitous that competitors (MCX) had to shut down NFC support to prevent it from working (and pissing off their customers in the process)? Yeah, maybe Apple Pay will fail. But we’re talking about a company so good at what they’re doing that just minor mistakes make big news, vs competitors whose failures hardly make news save for the sheer staggering scale of fail (see Microsoft Kin) and 996 others that don’t even make news for trying. Yeah, “sure things” go wrong ... but not all of them, this is a “failure is not an option” thing, and making it trivial unto invisible/ubiquitous for hundreds of millions of users on their next device upgrade is about as optimistic as possible.
If you like the current 19 digit number system, continue swiping your plastic or handing it to waiters who walk those numbers to back rooms with cameras. I’d rather it be buried within a proxy token system where whatever number anyone other than the intended recipient sees gets an already-expired code ... and all that in a platform which instantly invalidates the moment I stop touching it.
Are breaches possible in Apple Pay? Yeah, but you have to go so far as lift my fingerprints, know my passcode, and use my device. In security, I’m comfortable with a limit of “if you’re going that far, you win” (say, home security vs. a trained team of breachers using body armor, AP ammo, night vision, and flashbangs). If you’re that motivated to do what it takes to breach my Apple Pay system, what you’ll get from my account isn’t worth your time.