Apple Pay

If you’re still waiting for your bank to add support for Apple Pay, you may be in luck today. Several additional banks across the United States have joined Apple’s growing list of over a thousand partners that work with the mobile payment service. These are the latest banks to work with Apple Pay:

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Remember MCX CurrentC, the QR-code based mobile payment system that attempted to take on Apple Pay? Launched two years ago, it immediately started creating waves when it required its retail members to switch off Apple Pay or be fined. If that weren’t bad enough, it was quickly hacked.

Apple Pay fans made fun of the service in app reviews, and it wasn’t long before retailers started to break ranks and we saw some rapid back-pedalling on Apple Pay from one CEO before he was replaced by another.

Little has been heard from MCX since, and it’s no surprise that the consortium finally appears to be giving up on the idea – though it has stopped a little way short of admitting as much …

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While Walmart remains among the list of stores stubbornly resisting Apple Pay, the retail giant is slowly pushing forward with its own mobile payment service called Walmart Pay. An update to Walmart’s mobile app added support for the digital wallet last month, and today the retailer announced that over 500 stores across two states now support Walmart Pay at checkout.

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Until today, Canadians who wanted to use Apple Pay had only one option: a non-bank-issued American Express card. That’s finally changed as the first two of Canada’s ‘big five banks’ joined today, with the remaining three confirmed for ‘the coming months,’ reports the Financial Post.

Starting Tuesday, Interact debit and major credit cards issued by Royal Bank of Canada and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce will support the payments technology, which allows users to load cards onto their iPhones and Apple Watches and make in-store purchases using their devices.

Two smaller financial institutions also add Apple Pay support today …

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Apple Pay may be a convenient, one-tap method of paying for your purchases – but not if you want to collect rewards points at the same time. That has so far always required a separate step, usually using the store’s own app.

Department store Kohl’s has just announced that it has partially solved the problem, allowing Yes2You Rewards points to be accrued just by using Apple Pay  …

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We’re now more than a year and a half out from the launch of Apple Pay — Apple’s iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch-based mobile payment system — in the US, and we’re still seeing additional banks across the country regularly join the roster of participating partners. More than 20 new banks have added Apple Pay support in this round, and a new prepaid card launching in the UK today has also made the list. These are the latest banks to work with Apple Pay:

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Apple Pay officially expanded to its sixth country yesterday with Apple adding support for Singapore and today, the company has added support for over 50 new banks and credit unions in the United States. Starting today, customers of the following banks and credit unions can add their debit and credit cards to Apple Pay and use it instead:

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Apple Pay is now available in yet another country. Apple today has updated its website and Apple Pay support page to reveal that the service is now available in Singapore. Through a partnership with American Express, users in Singapore can now take advantage of the company’s mobile payments solution.

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Earlier today we reported that Barclays in the UK finally added Apple Pay support after a lengthy delay, and back in the US there are 32 more banks and credit unions that now let you add their issued debit and credit cards to use with Apple’s mobile payment solution. These are the latest additions:

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Over nine months since Apple Pay was introduced to the UK, Barclays bank has finally gone live and launched its support for Apple’s mobile payments service. This means that every major bank in the UK now supports Apple Pay, a big win for a country that already has wide availability of contactless merchant terminals in many stores.

If you are a Barclays customer, open Wallet on your iPhone to get started and setup Apple Pay for your account. NFC comes bundled with Apple’s recent iPhones: iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus and the new iPhone SE ..

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According to a new report from Re/code, Apple is set to expand its Apple Pay mobile payments solution to the web before this coming holiday shopping season. According to the report, Apple has been telling potential partners that with this expansion, users will be able to use Apple Pay instead of entering their card information on the retailer websites.

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Yesterday we saw longtime holdout Ally Bank turn on Apple Pay for its customers, and today Apple’s list of over a thousand banks and credit unions across the United States and beyond picked up even more additions including more in Mainland China. These are the latest Apple Pay banks:

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Ally Bank today announced that its customers can now use Apple Pay with Ally-issued cards. Before today, Ally Bank was among the list of major national banks in the United States without support for Apple Pay. Ally Bank isn’t yet on Apple’s growing list of more than 1,000 bank and credit union partners, but will likely appear in the next refresh.

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If Apple’s most recent hardware events were about going bigger (larger iPhones, a jumbo iPad, and a new Apple TV), Apple’s March 21st event is about going smaller. Apple yesterday officially sent invites to its much-anticipated event to be held at its Cupertino campus with the tagline “Let us loop you in.” The event, which was originally internally scheduled for a week earlier, will focus on Apple’s new 4-inch iPhone SE, a smaller, 9.7-inch iPad Pro, and new Apple Watch bands. The company will likely also reveal the final versions of iOS 9.3, tvOS 9.2, watchOS 2.2, OS X 10.11.4, and an iTunes update. We’ve reported nearly the entirety of what’s expected to come at the event, so read on for a full roundup of everything we’re likely to see. (Updated March 18th with the latest information):

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If you’ve been wanting to pay for your gas at ExxonMobile stations using Apple Pay, the good news is that you now can, reports CNET.

Apple Pay went live Tuesday in more than 6,000 Exxon and Mobil-branded gas stations across 46 US states. The service will be added to about 2,000 more stores by mid-year and will be available in nearly all of the company’s 10,000 locations by the end of 2016.

But if you were expecting to just wave your iPhone or Apple Watch at a reader on the pump, that’s not quite how it works …

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Since launching in China two weeks ago and adding 3 million users in just two days, Apple Pay is continuing its expansion across the United States as well. The addition of Mainland China started with another dozen participating banks, and today another 27 banks have joined the 1,000+ partners in the US. These are the latest:

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Apple Pay looks to have been a big hit in China, Internet Retailer reporting that three million bank cards were activated in the first two days of the launch. Apple had been expecting big numbers, using a gradual rollout of the service on day one, something not well communicated to cardholders.

In the first two days after the Feb. 18 launch, 3 million consumers linked their bank cards to Apple Pay according to China Merchants Bank, one of 19 Chinese banks involved in the rollout.

It’s an impressive number, but with card processor UnionPay having a monopoly on card processing, a single deal by Apple meant the service is available to a staggering total of 5B cards …

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There have been many attempts at mobile wallet products over the years, from letting your phone simulate a swipe of your magnetic strip through NFC-based replication of contactless cards to the laughable CurrentC that relies on scanned QR codes. Over on Android phones, there’s Google Wallet, Android Pay and Samsung Pay – along with a whole slew of smaller competitors.

But for iPhone users, Apple Pay is the undisputed champion. Security is unrivalled. Your card details are never stored at all, replaced with a unique Device Account Number. That number is stored in the Secure Enclave. And a one-time code is generated for every single transaction.

Convenience too is maximized. iPhone users need only hold out their iPhone with their thumb or finger on the Touch ID button, while Apple Watch owners simply raise their wrist to the reader. I didn’t think there was any way to improve on it, but Google may be about to prove me wrong with its Hands Free service …

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Following reports that Apple Pay would be launching in France before the end of this year, it now looks like the service could be coming to a handful of other countries, as well. According to a MasterCard roadmap received by 9to5Mac from an anonymous unproven source, Apple Pay could potentially launch with support from at least MasterCard in Japan, Singapore, Brazil, and Hong Kong by the end of this year. The document also shows that Apple Pay in Canada could gain the support of MasterCard by the end of the year, as well. Currently Apple Pay in Canada is only supported on American Express cards.

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