"An industry consultant, Cherian Abraham, put the fraud rate at 6 percent, compared with a traditional credit card fraud rate that is relatively minuscule, 10 cents for every $100 spent. Mr. Abraham wrote in a blog post, one of the first to spotlight the issue, that the Apple Pay fraud “is growing like a weed, and the bank is unable to tell friend from foe. No one is bold enough to call the emperor naked.”"

"The vulnerability in Apple Pay is in the way that it — and card issuers — “onboard” new credit cards into the system. Because Apple wanted its system to have the simplicity for which it has become famous and wanted to make the sign-up process “frictionless,” the company required little beyond basic credit card information about a user. Nor did it provide much information to the banks, like full phone numbers and addresses, that might help them detect fraud early."

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/17/business/banks-find-fraud-...

Neither Apple nor banks will release official fraud numbers for Apple Pay despite repeated requests.

Don't have a citation handy but I have read that some banks would authorize cards for Apple Pay without any decent authentication.

So thieves that had stolen credit card numbers elsewhere registered those cards on their Apple Pay devices and then used those to charge them.

The credit card numbers had already been stolen, but Apple Pay was used to buy things on those accounts.

There is not - that I have ever seen - any indication that Apple Pay has been hacked.

The real fight here is not about Apple at all. It's about banks (who want a new secure standard) vs merchants (who want to maintain their tracking abilities and maybe get out from under the 2% fees).