PayPal has gone on the offensive against Apple’s recently announced Apple Pay mobile payments offering, by taking out a full page ad in The New York Times that takes a not so subtle dig at Apple’s recent iCloud celebrity photo leak woes, insinuating that Apple’s new payments service may be less than secure.
“We the people want our money safer than our selfies,” reads the ad first shared by Pando Daily. “PayPal, protecting the people economy.”
The ad refers to the recent rash of photo leaks from celebrity’s iCloud accounts. Apple has pointed out that the leak was tied to weak usernames and passwords, rather than an actual iCloud security breach.
As the breach occurred just ahead of Apple’s announcement about its mobile payments initiative, the company scrambled to assure customers that it had plans to broaden the use of two-factor authentication, and to send email alerts when iCloud is accessed, a device is restored, or a password change has been made or attempted.
PayPal’s attacks are not surprising in the least, considering Apple is set to become a foe in the highly competitive mobile payments marketplace. Apple Pay works in a way similar to PayPal’s allowing users to attach credit or debit cards to their payment account, and then paying for goods or services without the need to supply actual credit card details.
PayPal has experienced its own security issues recently, facing issues with its two-factor authentication system.
