Visa Europe has announced that its European contactless payment terminals will support the tokenization service used by Apple Pay by mid-April. This would allow Apple to introduce Apple Pay to Europe anytime from this point on. MasterCard has advised us that it already supports tokenisation globally.
Tokenisation technology will be at the heart of new mobile payment solutions and has been hailed as one of the best data protection and fraud prevention methods available. The new service will be available for financial institutions [in Europe] from mid-April 2015.
Although Europe has had contactless payment cards for several years, these currently transmit the actual card details to the terminal. Apple Pay, in contrast, transmits single-use codes which card companies can map back to the actual card, a functionality currently only available on the Visa network in the USA. As of mid-April, that functionality will be available in Europe too …
While Apple has not yet announced a date for introducing Apple Pay to Europe, bank sources have suggested that the UK launch will be in the first half of this year. A job listing revealed last year that Apple had a London-based team working on rolling out the service across Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa.
Visa Europe has not confirmed that Apple will be using the service, but has strongly hinted that this is the case in a statement to Reuters.
“Apple and Visa (Inc) have an agreement around what has happened,” spokesman Steve Perry said. “I am as excited as anyone, but we have to wait,” he said.
Visa had earlier announced plans to roll out tokenization for other mobile and online payment services, including Visa Checkout.
Within the U.S., Apple Pay is now supported by more than 80 banks, credit unions and other financial institutions. If yours isn’t listed, you can check out our rolling list of banks which have promised to introduce support for Apple Pay, together with the stores and apps where the service can be used.
Via TNW
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Excellent. Too bad though that the home button won’t start to look like used leather. Oh well.
It can not come soon enough =)
Good news. I love Apple Pay. The more people who can access it and use it, the better.
Wasn’t it 9to5 Mac who said that ApplePay would be in Canada in March? There’s been zero indication that it’s happening and we’re at the end of February. Some banks (RBC) continue to say that they can’t see ApplePay in Canada in the foreseeable future.
“As soon as March” – but as we noted then, that appears to be a goal rather than any kind of certainty: http://9to5mac.com/2015/01/09/apple-planning-apple-pay-expansion-into-canada-as-soon-as-march/
Umm, tokenisation is fully supported in Canada too since forever ! There are plenty of folks using Apple pay at many stores in Canada. Tim Hortons and McDonalds for example. Plenty of youtube videos showing this in action. In fact, Canada was ready for Apple Pay BEFORE the US. It’s just that apple decided to lanch in US first.
Canada is less of a technological problem, more of a legal one.
When is Apple going to put the infrastructure in place in their App Stores and iTunes? You still can’t use Apple Pay to make purchases in the App Stores and iTunes, which is rediculous.
I can hardly pay with a credit card in Munich – Germany, and since the introduction of the contactless payments and the presence of new terminals, the contactless payment with a credit card does not work or is not accepted by the shop or the cashier is looking at you weirdly not seeing you inserting the card to have the chip being read. I hardly doubt Apple Pay will be working in Germany (and in Munich in particular) anytime soon. Here they want the hard cash.
(on the same leit-motiv of having services available which cannot be effectively be used, iCloud services are essentially useless when you have only 6Mbits uplink bandwidth on a cable internet access with 120Mbit downlink…how am I supposed to upload my pictures? and my connection is one of fastest you can get in the city…)
Tolkienization sounds awesome!
Parts of Europe already look very much like Middle Earth.
“Apple Pay, in contrast, transmits single-use codes which card companies can map back to the actual card, a functionality currently only available in the USA.”
Can we please kill this misconception? The security codes are dynamic, but the token (the fake credit card number that gets mapped back to the PAN aka real card number) is created when you add a card to Apple Pay and is then reused for every transaction. This is still fine, however, because unlike a PAN, the token *requires* the dynamic security code, and is useless if stolen from a merchant.
I use Pay wherever I can. The convenience of speed is appreciated. More so is the security offered by the Pay method. I will never need to dispute an unauthorized charge with this form of mobile payment.