The Financial Post reports in its Tuesday edition if a mobile phone is stolen and the information is used to steal money, it is almost always the bank that is on the hook for the loss. The Post's Barbara Shecter quotes Fred Cate at Indiana University as saying: "For legal and competitive reasons, the customer is almost always made whole. As a bank, you just can't say to your customer, 'Sorry you lost money with us.'" Recent data breaches that exposed personal customer information, like the ones at retailer Target Corp. and Home Depot, can hurt any company's brand, but banks are unique because their reputation is based on the security of their customers' money. Royal Bank of Canada's RBC Wallet allows customers to make Visa, MasterCard or debit payments using smart phones. On Monday, tech giant Apple rolled out its Apple Pay mobile payment system in the United States with hundreds of banks already signed on to the technology that aims to replace credit cards swiped at a cash register with smart phones. Canada's chief banking regulator, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI), requires financial institutions to do detailed self-assessments of their cyber-security preparedness.