Apple Pay Dodges “Customer Profiles”
When you pay in a store, the swipe of a credit card can generally be tied back to you. Major retailers like Target or Walmart, for example, link your credit card to a “customer profile” of you. And that’s not counting point-of-sale system manufacturers like Verifone or Square, who also get a slice of your data.
There isn’t any surefire defense against these types of data harvesting tactics, but if you use the Apple Card with Apple Pay, you do have an advantage. That’s because Apple Pay doesn’t require that you share your actual card number with these point-of-sale systems. Instead, Apple Pay uses a unique device identifier for transactions.