Apple Pay has provided a solution to a problem that has beset online share trading for individuals: how to quickly and safely transfer money to their broker.
That was tricky before for two reasons, explains brokerage firm TD Ameritrade, the first to accept fund transfer by Apple Pay …
Reuters reports that the first problem was being forced to choose between speed and complexity.
Debit cards provide both speed and simplicity, but create fraud risks. Using Apple Pay means that customers get all the benefits of using a debit card with the far greater security offered by the mobile wallet service, which uses one-time codes instead of card numbers.
“When a customer wants to put money into a TD Ameritrade account, we gave them the same choices they had in the 1970s and 1980s,” she said. “We knew it was a persistent client irritant.”
The card used for Apple Pay transactions must be a debit, not credit, card. It remains illegal to use credit cards to fund a brokerage account to protect consumers from the temptation to gamble on the stock market with borrowed money.
Tuteja said TD Ameritrade chose Apple Pay to start with because of its ease of use, security and the fact that about three-quarters of the brokerage’s clients use the iOS operating system.
The firm says that it plans to later offer support to other mobile wallet services like Google Pay and WeChat, but Apple Pay was the best match for its core demographic.
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