Apple goes to some pretty crazy lengths to ensure secrecy for its various projects, and it expects a similar commitment from its partners.
According to a New York Times article, prior to releasing Apple Pay, the key players (which included Apple and banks such as JP Morgan Chase) referred to each other by code-names after rumors of Apple’s interest in mobile payments surfaced in early 2013.
Internally, JP Morgan went even further than that: holding conversations about Apple Pay in windowless office rooms. As per the article, just one third of JP Morgan employees working on the project knew that it was Apple who was the mystery partner.
The ruse continued right up until Tim Cook announced Apple pay at Tuesday’s keynote, which meant that uninformed people in the room were more than a little baffled why their day was being used to follow the unveiling of a new iPhone and smart watch.
Still, as anyone who has worked with Apple knows, them’s the breaks when you’re working with a partner like Cupertino.
Source: New York Times
Via: Business Insider
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
11 responses to “Banks went code-name crazy to keep Apple Pay a secret”
Then why the hell can’t they keep all the iPhone leaks secret?
controlled leak…
No.
No proof for either party. But there was too much secrecy for them to be controlled leaks. They all originated from other countries were the parts are made so it only makes sense.
It doesn’t make sense because you aren’t fully thinking about it. In the States apple has more control. Where as overseas where all the internal parts are made had the leaks. The can’t control whats don’t there too much, and there are too many companies to control in the first place. Just take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
First off, this is the biggest launch Apple has ever had. They expect to sell some 80 million iPhones within the first month or so. That’s an insane number of devices.
Second, iP6 is being made in China (mostly). When Apple makes huge pressure demands on companies like Foxconn, Foxconn will subcontract orders for parts because they can’t make it fast enough.
These subcontractors are the ones making the leaks, not Foxconn. These subcontractors don’t have as much to lose as Foxconn does because they are smaller bit players that only get called when Foxconn can’t fulfill their orders so they could care less if they leak the info or not.
Then Foxconn finds out about the leak and that subcontractor gets the boot. So Foxconn hires another subcontractor, but the same thing happens, another leak. None of the leaks come from the same source, it’s a different source every time.
Which is why I said NO it wasn’t a controlled leak from Apple them selves.
Because they are mass produced products. Very hard to keep that many parts secret especially being made in another country.
I work for Chase, we actually had training on it last month at the branch level, but it was called Chase Pay in the training…