Is Credit Card information visible to sellers during Apple Pay transactions?

No, and that’s whole point of Apple Pay. Using any of the cards in your Wallet app to complete a transaction your card numbers and personal data are NOT provided to the merchant. An encrypted token is exchanged between your credit card company and the merchant, thats it, no other data.

It’s also the reason many large retailers (like Walmart) resisted NFC (near field communication) like Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay. They couldn’t get their hands on your data for marketing purposes.

Using Apple Pay online is by far the safest way to prevent fraud. Of course there are alternatives like PayPal that, like Apple, put themselves between you and the merchant.

Hi, and those are all good questions. Please let me explain how Apple Pay works.

When you enter your card details in your Apple Wallet app, your iPhone encrypts the data and deletes the unencrypted card details. The encrypted data goes through an authentication and approval process with the Payment Network Operator (Visa, MasterCard, American Express etc.). Please note Apple does not participate in the approval process.

Once your bank approves adding your card, they issue an encrypted payment token. The encrypted token is sent to Apple servers and they install the token in your device’s Secure Element.

When you start a transaction/payment process, your iPhone creates a one time use code that contains none of your personal or card details. The information is sent from your iPhone using NFC to the merchant’s POS system. Certain transactions require a phone number and other details. For example a firearm purchase. The vast majority of transactions have minimum personal information disclosed and specifically those details required by state or federal laws.

Your bank receives the encrypted data, decrypts it and either approves or declines the payment/transaction. The token contains a one time use code and cannot be approved again.

The exception is a subscription. When you enter into a subscription/trial subscription a multi use token is created and sent to the merchant. The merchant keeps thus token and submits it to your bank for payment at the interval you agreed to when accepting and agreeing to the terms of the subscription.

After the initial payment/transaction your device and Apple Wallet are no longer involved in future payments. So, who controls the tokens generated by your iPhone? There are three parties involved, you, your bank and the merchant.

Ask your bank to revoke their token. Ask the merchant to cancel your subscription. They may or may not. Log out of your iCloud account, which will remove all cards/payment methods from your device.

In most cases that will revoke the subscription token. However, some banks may reissue tokens or continue to honor old tokens. But you removing a card from your Wallet app has no effect on future transactions/payments.

Your card information may well have been obtained elsewhere but not from Apple Pay. As I pointed out no personal or card information is revealed when using Apple Pay and the Wallet app.

dcistaro wrote:

Thanks Jeff, but I am still confused. If removing all cards from Wallet does not effect Apple Pay, what does? And where is it stored if I choose to remove it, or update the expiration date?

Two things I didn’t specifically address. Your financial information is mostly stored in the Secure Element is essentially a computer within a computer. The SE has its own processor, memory, operating system etc. About the only common system shared is the power supply. Only Apple can directly access the SE. However, your actions will affect it as well such as logging out of your Apple Account. That will remove all payment methods from the SE. But it does not cancel a subscription or remove your legal obligation to pay the subscription.

Once payment methods are tokenized and stored in the SE, your bank will manage the account and any changes in tokenization. In other words the expiration date encrypted in the token is most likely different from your physical card. This is an anti fraud measure.

Removing a card has no effect on future charges. Apple Wallet is not something that can be charged. Apple Wallet is basically an organizer for your actual payment methods ( debit and credit cards) that you’ll use with Apple Pay. Apple doesn’t send notices of payments made on cards in the Wallet app. Did you provide any card details when you received the charge notification and to whom?

dcistaro wrote:

Thank you for the clarification. What prompted my inquiry was a notice from Apple that the mobile wallet was charged .01 cents by supposedly the Wall Street Journal. However, they show no record of that charge. It now appears on the credit card statement for the card on my Wallet, as a precaution, I removed the card from Wallet and will watch card account daily. The .01 charge is sometimes used by phishing and if it passes, then a much larger charge is attempted.

It almost sounds like the test charge you'd get if you were, for example, using the card to set up a subscription. Companies will send a charge, usually $1, to make sure the card is valid. But I've never heard of it with Apple Pay, even when used through a website.