Is Apple Pay really any more convenient than plastic?

THERE'S no doubt about it: electronic payment facilities are an open goal for fraudsters and other denizens of the internet's darker places.

So where does this leave the new apps from Apple, Google and others, whose mission is to make transacting money quicker and easier than ever before? If it’s easier for you, it will be even more so for the crooks.

Certainly, you should not expect sympathy if you fall victim to crime - not when even the Metropolitan Police commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, is asking banks to remove what he calls the “safety blanket of compensation” in order to make us think twice before making bad decisions online.

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But with the giants of technology competing with high street banks to do away with not only cash payments but also plastic cards, it’s not an area we can easily opt out of.

Apple Pay is already up and running in thousands of UK outlets, including the entire London Underground, and its Android equivalent - formerly called Google Wallet and now rebadged Android Pay - is arriving from the US any time now. In both cases, you register your existing debit cards with the phone and complete your transaction by waving the handset in front of a scanner. Your actual card stays in your pocket, or at home.

Both systems use a technology known as near field communication (NFC), which is built into the iPhone 6, Apple Watch and newer Android models. If your handset is more than a couple of years old, it’s unlikely to be compatible.

You need to enter your passcode to confirm your purchase, and some retailers will use fingerprint scanners as a secondary security measure - though any benefit is likely to be outweighed by the health hazard. But the real risk occurs when you lose your phone. Once you’ve realised it has gone, you can freeze your account - but that may be too late to prevent initial misuse. At least your bank details aren’t stored on the phone, so no crook is going to get the keys to your account this way.

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For all the sophistication, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that NFC payments are a solution looking for a problem. We in the UK have already embraced contactless payments using our existing debit cards, and the keying-in of a PIN number for larger purchases has never seemed a limiting factor. Any convenience advantages of the NFC systems are marginal at best.

Online payments, on the other hand, could be where Android and Apple Pay come into their own, and their likely take-up this year by all manner of website merchants could finally do away with the need to fill in address forms and card numbers, especially on fiddly phone screens.

That’s also where the rival PayPal service comes in. The long-established transactor of choice on Ebay is seeing its existence threatened by the emergence of Apple and Android’s systems, and is fighting back with an app of its own. Though it is available in far fewer shops, PayPal does have the advantage of being able to send money both ways, and to individuals as well as companies. It’s a convenient way of splitting a cab fare or restaurant bill, for instance.

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