Apple Pay question

[DaveWT]

I have always had the belief that one of the advantages of paying with Apple Pay is that the merchant never gets to know your Visa number - instead a different Apple supplied number is fed to them. Did I get that wrong? Today while booking travel arrangements I used the touch sensor on my fancy new keyboard with my new Mac Mini to pay with Apple Pay. When I got the confirmation of the transaction by email it showed the last 4 digits of my actual Visa card. Of course only the last 4 digits isn't too bad if that's all they got but it is 4 digits more than I understood they would get. Perhaps they know the whole number and only showed the last 4 digits in the email for "security" reasons!

 

[chas_m]

Reading this document -- https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT203027 -- suggests that the merchant's bank and thus merchant gets PART of your actual credit card number as a verification check, but not the whole thing. Apple doesn't keep your cc number either, BUT the secure enclave on your phone does.

However, rules vary between countries so you have to assume the Apple document I referenced above is written for the US and things could be different up here.

 

[DaveWT]

Thanks Chas,

Good to know the merchant doesn't get the whole card number. These transactions were in the US.

Dave