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Posts tagged with "apple pay"

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.

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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Apple Pay FAQ and Apps→

Earlier today, Apple posted two support documents detailing frequently asked questions about Apple Pay and the security and privacy of the service.

From the FAQ:

When I’m paying in a store using my debit card in Apple Pay, should I choose Credit or Debit on the terminal?

When presented with this choice, we recommend you to choose “Credit” to get the most consistent Apple Pay experience. Choosing “Debit” may not always work successfully with some older merchant payment terminals and backend systems.

And about security:

When you pay using Apple Pay in stores

Paying in stores that accept contactless payments with Apple Pay uses Near Field Communication (NFC) technology between your device and the payment terminal. NFC is an industry-standard contactless technology designed to work only across short distances. If your iPhone 6 is on and it detects an NFC field, it will present you with your default credit or debit card. To send your payment information, you must authenticate using Touch ID or your passcode. No payment information is sent without your authentication.

MacRumors has a list of the retail stores that have begun accepting Apple Pay in the US today. Apple has also launched an Apple Pay section (currently on the front page of the US iPhone App Store) showcasing iOS apps that have been updated with Apple Pay support, including the Apple Store app.

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