What does apple pay tell merchants?

[Grumble]

I made a small purchase today and used my credit card details stored on my phone to pay, as I’m sure most people here will be familiar with. What I wasn’t expecting was a text message shortly afterwards thanking me for my purchase. And then an email. I wasn’t aware that my details were handed over with my payment authorisation like that. Have I been sleeping under a rock? I know when I used Apple Pay online these things get filled in, and it can be quite handy, but this was a tap to pay terminal.

[sTeamTraen]

No idea, but what I do know is that the card number that the merchant's terminal sees is not the number written on the physical card that you loaded into the app. So for example if you pay with the app and need a refund paying to that card, you have to use the app, not the card. And if you have reset/reloaded the app in the meantime, and re-connected the cards, the number might (I guess) not be the same.

On the plus side, I recently got a new NatWest card to replace an expired one that I had connected to the app, and although I had to re-register it on a website where I have recurring payments, I didn't have to do anything in the app (this is Google Wallet rather than Apple, but I'm guessing it works the same way). I just noticed that the expiry date on this card in the app had been updated, but otherwise it just worked straight away.

[philip]

Apple state https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-pay/
"After you authorize the payment, other information requested by the merchant, such as a device- or merchant-specific account number, your shipping address, or email address, is also provided."

[IvanV]

Not Apple Pay, but Stripe. I was blithely telling people paying small sums for events run by my charity that I don't see their credit card number etc when they pay on Stripe, to get them to have confidence to use it. Because they are mostly suspicious old people. And I had checked this out, by interrogating the transaction every which way I could find, and I couldn't see their credit card number.

But then I needed to do the annual accounts, and was having trouble getting Stripe to give me a sensible download with enough details to enable me to do that. Eventually I found a way of telling it to download every damn detail about the transaction, which you have to know the right menu route to find that particular download. And the spreadsheet it gave me was finally enough detail to do the accounts, as well as piles of junk I didn't need. But that download came with credit card numbers, home addresses, and email address the receipt was sent to. And so I would imagine that level of detail to the vendor was routine.

So you would have to use an indirect payment system like PayPal to hide your credit card number from the seller. And ideally load credit on your account in advance, so that you aren't using any card at the moment of paying...

[nekomatic]

Apple state https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-pay/
"After you authorize the payment, other information requested by the merchant, such as a device- or merchant-specific account number, your shipping address, or email address, is also provided."

I’m surprised to hear that the merchant gets your email address from a contactless Apple Pay transaction - that doesn’t seem very Apple. My email address does appear in the ‘Transaction Defaults’ section of Apple Pay settings on my iPhone, but there it also says ‘Addresses and payment options can be changed at the time of transaction’ which is true of website payments but clearly can’t apply to contactless. I’m sure I’ve never had texts or emails from a company based purely on doing contactless Apple Pay.