As we wrote at the time: "We'll see: Credit account information will flow between the customer and Apple at some point, somehow. Apple's systems haven't been anything like secure in the past (see here and here), so the company's promise that this one will be rock-solid shouldn't be taken as gospel." We observed that although the iPhones carrying the Apple Pay app might be as secure as the company claimed, "the risk will reside somewhere."

We told you so.

Reports have surfaced over the last week that fraudsters have found the soft underbelly of Apple Pay -- as one would expect -- and are exploiting it gleefully, with one security expert estimating the fraud rate at a stupendous $6 per $100 of transactions. "Fraud ... is growing like a weed," says the expert, Cherian Abraham of Drop Labs, a mobile commerce consultant. The security hole Apple claimed to have closed via Apple Pay may even make certain forms of fraud even easier.

It's possible that Apple's boasts about the security of Apple Pay made the credit card industry too complacent. The flaw arose in a part of the system especially vulnerable to low-tech hacking.