Apple Pay – which facilitates easy, secure and private contactless transactions – is now available to Canadians with Interac debit cards.
This means consumers can add Interac debit cards to their Apple Wallet and shop at the hundreds of thousands of merchant locations where contactless payments are already accepted in Canada. Apple Pay is currently supported by a range of devices, including the iPhone SE, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and Apple Watch.
“Security and privacy is at the core of Apple Pay, so when used with a payment card, the actual card numbers are not stored on the device, nor on Apple servers,” Bell ID’s André Stoorvogel told Rambus Press. “Instead, a unique Device Account Number is assigned, encrypted and securely stored in the Secure Element of the device. Each transaction is authorized with a one-time unique dynamic security code. Using the Interac Token Service Provider (TSP), each Apple Pay transaction is validated with a one-time unique token.”
As Stoorvogel notes, the Interac TSP was developed in collaboration with IBM, Rambus’ Bell ID and Everlink.
“Since Apple Pay transactions using Interac are backed by the Interac brand, consumers are further protected from fraud with transaction limits and zero customer liability,” he added.
As we’ve previously discussed on Rambus Press, tokenization reduces the value of stored payment credentials by replacing them with a randomly generated number that resembles the customer’s primary account number (PAN). Essentially, this means tokenized data is worthless if obtained by fraudsters, as it simply acts as a reference for a consumer’s original card data – which only the card networks and/or the consumer’s bank can map back to the original account.
Interested in learning more? You can check out the official Interac press release here and browse Bell ID’s resources section here.
Leave a Reply