A new report French website iGen indicates that France could be seeing an Apple Pay announcement in as early as the first half of this year. While Apple announced the UnionPay partnership for China two months ago, there has yet to be any signs that other additional countries outside the US and UK (aside from Australia and Canada’s American Express arrangement) would be seeing Apple Pay any time soon. Other reports believe that China could be seeing Apple Pay, which is promised to go live in early 2016, activated as soon as this Thursday at 5 AM (Beijing time).
France’s rumored Apple Pay announcement could be discussed during this year’s WWDC in June, but as negotiations are still occurring, when exactly users will be able to utilize the contactless-pay system in stores remains a question. With France potentially on deck to receive Apple Pay this year, it’s likely Apple could be focusing on other European countries as well.
The initial launch in the United States met competitors and retailers that were contractually obligated not to support the new payment system, slowing down users who wanted to use the system everywhere. Contactless payment systems are already widespread across Europe and beyond, however, so adoption should be less controversial.
Chinese banks already seem to be fully accepting of the systems launch as even a bank’s WeChat account is confirming Thursday’s launch.
China Guangfa Bank is responding to inquiries about Apple Pay explaining that it will be available on February 18th at 5 AM and that users should be running iOS 9.2 and watchOS 2.1 to start using the service.
Hello, the Apple company, China UnionPay jointly confirmed, Apple Pay service will be held February 18 at 5:00 formally launched. In case the card can not be loaded Please try again later, iPhone / iPad system needs OS9.2 above, Apple Watch OS2.1…
Translation
As companies make accepting Apple Pay even easier, it would only benefit end users to have Apple Pay accepted in more and more countries. As there are now 2 million accepting locations and 5 million contactless-pay ready terminals in Apple Pay accepting countries, bringing in China (and France, hopefully later this year) will significantly expand Apple Pay’s footprint and threshold.
Further discoveries today are also pointing to the possibility that Canada’s Interac may be coming to Apple Pay as well. Code as far back as iOS 9.2 are showing Interac as a potential payment network alongside Amex, Discover, MasterCard, Visa, and China UnionPay. Chase Fromm posted a screenshot on Twitter today pointing to a line noting Interac’s payment network.
https://twitter.com/chasefromm2016/status/699302726505779200
WeChat conversation via CNBeta.
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Germany is waiting Apple! want Apple Pay so bad :D
Awesome! I still want Walmart to support Apple Pay.
Walmart has long had EMV(chip and pin) terminals and has little reason to update hundreds of thousands of pos terminals to support NFC.Most US retailers did not have EMV support so it made since to switch to terminals that supported both NFC and EMV.
Also Walmart wants to avoid all the transaction fees they can, so again it keeps them from having a reason to switch to NFC terminals and add Apple Pay support.
That’s weird because the Walmart next door to me just recently got chip and pin systems, and hasn’t had them ever. The first ones to upgrade to chip and pin were in the self-checkout lanes.
Actually the walmart out by me, didn’t get EMV readers until about 4-5 months ago, so they could have easily gotten terminals with NFC capabilities
As a French resident, I look forward to using Apple Pay, however, the 20 euro limit on contactless payments would slow down usage…
Is that 20 Euro limit a regulation by the government or banking/credit card industry?
its a government regulation in most countries, because the NFC Paywave and Paypass cards were one step verification, Apple Pay is 2 step verification and can get by the limits since Touch ID then the token makes it a 2 step verification instead of just the token from a NFC card.
I believe the €25 transaction limit in Germany is set by the government for contactless credit/debit cards as to protect consumers from any potential fraud.
However, I have no problem paying more than €25 with Pay in Germany. The most expensive I ever paid with Pay was €300 at Conrad Electronic for the SSD hardware and mounting kit. No signatures or verifications of any kind needed. I regularly spend €20-€100 on groceries at Kaiser/Tengelmann and other supermarkets such as Edeka. No problem with using Pay.
So far only Galeria Kaufhof requires the signature for any transaction more than €25. I had to sign the receipt for €180 purchase with Pay there.
I love Pay because it’s so rapid and more secure than credit or debit cards. The entire transaction with Pay is about five-ten seconds. With credit/debit card, it’s longer because I have to take the card of wallet, insert it in the reader, wait for the prompt to enter PIN, and then wait some more for the transaction to be approved. The reaction from the cashiers upon seeing the Pay for the first time is so sweet!
My bank always e-mails me whenever I make the large purchase or several purchases in rapid succession with Pay as to ask me if those transactions are valid or not. If they are not, my bank automatically deactivates Pay. That’s extra layer of security and additional peace of mind.
It won’t work in France. Nothing works in France, not even the French. (I’m having a bad day in France trying to find one who wants to work lol)
How do you know? I visited Toulouse last April and used Pay a several times there. Really marvellous!
Apple’s greed is making for the slow rollout of Apple Pay.
Apple needs to make deals with credit networks like UnionPay instead of it ridiculous bank by bank rollout here in the US. Make a deal with networks like Visa, discover, Diners Club, Maestro, MasterCard or whatever the banking network of a country is and be done with it.
It is pure greed for Apple to negotiate the transaction fee percentage bank by bank. The NFC structure is there, the token system is easily to implement with the payment processors and credit networks,Nothing is new with Apple Pay, it is built of existing technologies and is just a seamless intergradation of them.
I want to scream every time i see new banks updates. Make the deals with the credit networks and get Apple Pay global already Apple.
What if there is a direct limitation (legal or otherwise) between going directly to the banks and directly to the credit card networks and processors?
I doubt Apple is dealing with every single bank itself to get them on to Apple Pay, but maybe there is a partnership or relationship with each that Apple has to slowly work through to get Apple Pay activated.
Australia is looking dul thank goodness I’m moving to America soon