Posts tagged with "apple pay"

Apple Partners with China UnionPay to Bring Apple Pay to China in 2016

Update (18 December): iMore has a quote from Eddy Cue which lists some of the banks that will support Apple Pay in China; Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China, Bank of Guangzhou, Bank of Shanghai, China Construction Bank, China Ever-bright Bank, China Guangfa Bank, China CITIC Bank, China Merchants Bank, China Minsheng Bank, Industrial Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Ping An Bank, Postal Savings Bank of China and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank.

Apple today announced a partnership with China UnionPay, which will see Apple Pay available to Chinese customers as soon as early 2016. China UnionPay operates the Chinese inter-bank network and develops the UnionPay Card network – and its role in China is somewhat analagous to that of Visa and Mastercard.

“China UnionPay is dedicated to promoting payment innovations and providing secure, convenient mobile payment experiences for its hundreds of millions of cardholders, aligning multiple parties in the industry,” said Chai Hongfeng, executive vice president of China UnionPay. “We’re very excited to offer Apple Pay among a diverse set of innovative payment options that work with China UnionPay QuickPass.”

Apple says that it is working with China UnionPay to launch Apple Pay with 15 of China’s leading banks, but provides no firm date apart from saying it will available as “soon as early 2016”. According to Apple, the service needs to go through “tests and certification required by Chinese regulators”. At this stage it is unclear which 15 banks will be supported.

China UnionPay cards are issued by over 165 financial institutions and can be used at more than 26 million merchants, 1.9 million ATMs and to date over 5 billion UnionPay cards have been issued. Today’s announcement will likely make China the fifth country to support Apple Pay, with Spain, Singapore and Hong Kong also getting limited support for Apple Pay sometime in 2016.

“Apple Pay has revolutionized the way millions of people pay every day with their iPhone, Apple Watch and iPad,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “China is an extremely important market for Apple and with China UnionPay and support from 15 of China’s leading banks, users will soon have a convenient, private and secure payment experience.”

Today’s Apple Pay announcement is a big deal after a rather lackluster year for the service outside of the US. After launching in the US on October 20, 2014, Apple Pay finally expanded beyond the US in July this year when it lauched in the UK. But the UK launch was a bit of a shambles with just eight banks supporting the service at launch and just one of the “big four” – worsened by one of the banks delaying their support by a couple of weeks at the last minute. Then in late October this year Apple announced a partnership with American Express to bring Apple Pay to Australia and Canada, which it did in mid-November. Apple was unable, or perhaps unwilling, to make a deal with local banks – with numerous reports which say there was a deadlock between Apple and the banks over how much Apple should be paid from each transaction made using Apple Pay. The same limited, American Express only, Apple Pay support will roll out to Spain, Canada and Hong Kong starting in 2016.

Square Announces New Square Reader for Apple Pay, Contactless & Chip Cards

Square yesterday announced a new Square Reader, designed to work with contactless payment services such as Apple Pay, as well as “chip and PIN” EMV cards. The new contactless Square Reader can be reserved from today for $49.

The new contactless Square Reader is a pocket sized square puck (naturally), which can be used wirelessly with the Square app on an iOS or Android device. For customers with an EMV card, there’s also a slot on one of the sides of the the new Square Reader to insert the card’s chip into the device.

For now at least, Square’s mobile payment processing for small businesses is limited to the United States, Canada and Japan. The launch of this new contactless Square Reader may help boost Square’s international expansion efforts, particularly in countries such as the UK and Australia, where EMV cards are more widely adopted.

Apple Pay Now Available In Canada For American Express Customers, UK Banks Tesco and TSB Also Add Support

As reported by iPhone in Canada and 9to5Mac, Apple Pay is now available in Canada. Unlike the US and UK, Apple Pay support in Canada is limited and only available for American Express customers, as announced by Apple in its Q4 2015 earnings call.

Meanwhile in the UK, Engadget is today reporting that TSB and Tesco Bank now support Apple Pay and customers can add their cards to the Wallet app today. Barclays remains the last of the big four UK banks yet to add support for Apple Pay, but Barclays CEO has said previously it will add support for Apple Pay “very early in the New Year”.

Apple Pay is also expected to launch in Australia later this week on Thursday, November 19th. As with Canada, Apple Pay will be limited to certain American Express cardholders only. You can see if your American Express card is eligible with Apple Pay here.

https://twitter.com/smithjw/status/664571821249855488

Apple Posts New iPhone Advert: “Apple Pay”

Apple’s fourth advert featuring the new “If it’s not an iPhone, it’s not an iPhone” tagline was last night posted online. The new advert, “Apple Pay”, naturally focuses on Apple Pay, demonstrating Apple’s contactless payment method available on the iPhone 6 in the US and UK. The advert’s narration makes particular mention of how Apple Pay is “faster”, “safer” and keeps your information private.

This is an iPhone, and this is Apple Pay, which lets you shop in a faster, simpler way. For groceries, and kicks, toys and your lunchtime fix. It’s safer than a credit card and keeps your info, yours. And you can already use it in one million stores. If it’s not an iPhone, it’s not an iPhone.

You can watch the new advert below the break, or on YouTube.

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Apple Pay Now Available for UK HSBC and First Direct Customers

HSBC and First Direct customers in the UK can now use Apple Pay, two weeks after Apple Pay launched in the UK. Both banks had been expected to support Apple Pay when it launched in the UK (HSBC even accidentally leaked the launch date), and both were listed as a participating bank right up until the Apple Pay launch date, when HSBC revealed that it had to delay Apple Pay support due to “some issues”.

HSBC and First Direct join several other financial institutions including Royal Bank of Scotland, American Express, Nationwide, Natwest, Santander, and Ulster Bank in supporting Apple Pay in the UK. Out of the four big banks in the UK, two now support Apple Pay (HSBC & Royal Bank of Scotland), with the other two (Lloyds Bank and Barclays) committed to support it in the future.

Apple Pay support from HSBC seems to be limited at launch to those who have a personal bank account with a Visa Debit Card. For more information on setting up and using Apple Pay, see this Apple Support article.

Apple Pay Launches Today in the UK

Update: Apple Pay is now available. But in a last minute change, Apple has removed HSBC and First Direct from its list of participating banks and they are now listed as “coming soon”. We captured this image less than 24 hours ago which showed both these financial institutions as participating banks. One of our readers, Mitch got in contact with HSBC and they told him that support had been delayed by 2 weeks due to “some issues”. We understand that HSBC and First Direct will support Apple Pay on July 24. One other minor change is that MBNA, which was previously listed as “coming soon” is now listed as a participating bank.

After weeks of speculation, The Telegraph reports that Apple Pay will be available today in the UK. The UK is the second country to support Apple Pay, following the initial launch in the United States in late October 2014. Earlier today, several users on Twitter began noticing Apple Pay setup screens on their iPhones, suggesting that Apple was getting ready to roll out the service.

The Telegraph quoted VP of Apple Pay Jennifer Bailey:

“In America we’re not as advanced in using contactless as the UK, we’re only transitioning to chip and pin now,” she said. “Today there’s virtually no contactless from a card perspective - Apple Pay is the first contactless for the most part.”

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Apple Pay in Slow Fast Slow→

Studio Neat’s Dan Provost writes about how they integrated Apple Pay in the latest version of their iPhone app, Slow Fast Slow:

Integrating Apple Pay into the app wasn’t too difficult, but it wasn’t trivial, either. In a future post we will dive into the nuts and bolts of how we implemented Apple Pay. As far as we know, we are the first “indie” company to utilize it in an app.

We are excited to see how this integration affects sales. In theory, it is now much easier to purchase a Glif, so hopefully sales will trend upward, even as traffic to our site moves downward. We are also offering free shipping on the Glif, if purchased with Apple Pay; to grease the wheels, as it were. If you want to check out the redesigned ad with Apple Pay integration, simply tap the S/N logo on the home screen of Slow Fast Slow. If you are on a device that doesn’t support Apple Pay, the buy button is replaced with a button to studioneat.com.

Slow Fast Slow is an excellent app for slow-motion videos and I’m looking forward to playing with the new version (especially now that I have a new friend who will soon want to run and jump daily). I think it’s clever that Studio Neat is leveraging software to sell hardware and the experience of buying with Apple Pay in-app is intuitive and fast. I hope the experiment goes well.

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Apple Pay in Australia→

Beau Giles figured out a way to use Apple Pay, currently limited to the US, in Australia. Essentially, given the right settings and card, Apple Pay will treat the user as an American tourist in another country, with an obvious consequence:

Unfortunately, as you’re essentially paying with a card from the US, you’ll be paying currency conversion fees for anything you buy in Australia with Apple Pay.

I have tried this myself, and I could show the Apple Pay setup screen in Italy, but I don’t have a compatible American credit card. It’s too bad, because the MasterCard Nearby app shows plenty of Contactless-enabled stores in my area.

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