Mobile Payments Theft in China Spikes With Apple ID Theft

It’s bad news for Chinese mobile payments users—which at last report is actually a large part of China—as both Alipay and Tencent mobile payments users saw rampant thefts recently. Worse yet, the thefts seem to trace back to a common source: stolen Apple ID credentials.

Alipay, after learning of the attacks, not only got in contact with Apple to coordinate and get a better handle on the situation, but also warned its users about them. Alipay suggested that users that had linked Apple ID to their mobile payments services should lower transaction limits. Tencent, meanwhile, got in touch with Apple as well but it’s unclear whether or not they warned customers yet.

In what may have been some of the worst timing ever, this arrived just as Apple CEO Tim Cook showed up in China on a public relations trip. Apple hasn’t been having a good run in China in the last few weeks; not long ago, Chinese users were being socked with iMessage spam messages. The reports of Chinese spy chips on Apple motherboards, meanwhile, didn’t help, despite Apple’s pronounced denial of the message.

This illustrates, and surprisingly well, the reason why people are so concerned about mobile payments security. It’s easy for us who observe the mobile payments industry to roll our eyes and sigh about how there’s nothing that will ever be safe enough for all these intentional Luddites out there who won’t use mobile payments. Yet we forget that things like this still do happen.

Of course, it’s worth noting that things like this also happen to credit cards, debit cards, email accounts and most anything else in this day and age. Absolute security is pretty much impossible, which is why about the only way to overcome the security objection is with a great track record. Long stretches of nothing much with the occasional data breach is about the ideal result. When those breaches happen—and they will—the response becomes vital.

As much as we wish otherwise, data breaches are inevitable. It’s how we respond that’s the real issue, and Alipay and Tencent seem to be doing reasonably well. They’ll likely keep most of their user base thanks to that quick and fairly thorough response.