Paypal has taken out full page print ads in major US titles to critisie Apple’s new mobile payment system, claiming it is no safer than selfies.
The ads allude to this month’s iCloud hacking scandal which exposed hundreds of compromising celebrity photos stolen from their Apple accounts.
PayPal ran the print ad in the New York Times, USA Today and San Francisco Chronicle this week.
The firm is clearly threatened by Apple’s new payment system, and shares of its parent company eBay were rattled last week on the back of news that Apple was planning to launch Pay.
The NFC-enabled mobile payments service will be limited to US owners with an iPhone 6 when it launches in October, iPhone 5, iPhone 5s and 5c, but ultimately could be rolled out to 200 million people worldwide who already own earlier models of Apple smartphones.
In the past, Apple has rejected both PayPal and its payments platform subsidiary Braintree.
Neither firm appears on Apple’s list of “highly recommended” payment gateways for Apple Pay, which include rivals such as Stripe, but also authorize.Net, Chase Paymentech, Cybersource, First Data, and TSYS.
