Apple Pay

Earlier this week Apple stated that Apple Pay is off to a “great start” following its launch nearly a year ago, seeing double-digit growth in transactions every month. Now, it looks as if Apple has inked a deal that will greatly expand the presence of its mobile payments solution. Speaking at Re/code’s Code/Mobile conference today, Apple Pay head Jennifer Bailey announced that Starbucks will soon begin accepting the payment method in its 7,500 locations.

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Apple has declared that Apple Pay is off to a “great start” almost a year after its launch with the company seeing steady growth in Apple Pay transactions every month. In a statement to Bloomberg, the company said:

“We’re off to a great start and we are seeing continued, double-digit monthly growth in Apple Pay transactions since launch,” Apple said in an e-mailed statement.

Apple Pay launched last year with the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus in the US. The service expanded to the UK a few months ago. In Apple’s January investor call, Cook claimed 2015 was “the year of Apple Pay”. However, Bloomberg notes that not everyone is as thrilled with the mobile payments service as Apple is. At both Panera Bread and Firehouse, Apple Pay transactions make up low single-digit percentages of overall purchases…

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Apple is one step closer in its plans to take Apple Pay into the company’s second-largest market, China. The WSJ reports that Apple has created a company in the Shanghai free-trade zone specifically to operate its Apple Pay business in the country, and seeded it with $13.4M of capital.

The Apple Inc. entity, named Apple Technology Service (Shanghai) Ltd., was registered in the city’s free-trade zone on June 10, according to the Shanghai government’s company-registration database. Its business operations include technical consulting, services and system integration in the field of payments, the database showed.

With China already a bigger market for Apple than Europe, and looking set to overtake the USA in size, the potential for Apple Pay in the country is huge. Mobile payment is already widely accepted in China, with more than 300 million people using Alipay, the mobile wallet service created by ecommerce giant Alibaba … 
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Apple Pay compatibility in the UK grew by two major banks last week with the addition of Lloyds and Halifax, and today Apple has added over 40 to its list of participating issuers. Since launching in the United States nearly a year ago, Apple’s mobile payment solution has steadily been signing on and rolling out support for waves of new banks and credit unions around the country. These are the latest to join:
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Bank of America has updated its mobile banking app to allow sign-in using Touch ID, and has added Apple Watch support for balances, recent transactions and alerts.

The new fingerprint and Touch ID sign-in capabilities provide eligible Android, iPhone and iPad customers with a secure and convenient way to log into the mobile banking app using their fingerprint. This feature allows access to the most common functionality of the app without the additional need for a passcode.

The mobile banking app is now compatible with Apple Watch, allowing users to view account balances and recent transactions for their linked checking, savings, credit card and investment accounts, as well as receive real-time alerts and notifications on their wrist … 

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Apple Pay in the UK is slowly rounding up all the major banks and getting them onboard. Following the addition of HSBC and First Direct last month, Halifax and Lloyds customers can now use Apple Pay from today. The service is still rolling out so if your cards don’t activate immediately don’t fret. Check again in a few hours.

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Code/Mobile, Recode’s annual mobile technology conference, has become the norm for someone from Apple to appear. Last year, Apple VP Greg Joswiak took to the conference stage. This year, for the first time, Code/Mobile will feature Apple Pay head Jennifer Bailey. Bailey was most recently seen publicly on stage at WWDC and interviewed on CNBC.

The conference usually takes the form of a Q/A interview, so no doubt Bailey will be quizzed by the Recode hosts on the uptake of Apple Pay as well as new features in iOS 9 like loyalty cards and the rebranding of Passbook as ‘Wallet’.

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Announced earlier in the year, it is now official: Discover bank cards will be supported by Apple Pay from September 16th, the same day as iOS 9 is released. Discover joins Visa and MasterCard in the US as supporting card types for Apple’s contactless payments service.

To sweeten the deal, Discover is even offering a special cashback promotion to celebrate the addition of Apple Pay. You can get 10% cashback on up to $10,000 of in-store purchases until the end of the year, as long as those transactions were using Apple Pay.

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Apple’s official list of participating banks and credit unions supporting Apple Pay has grown by more than a dozen today. This means that even more people can start using Apple Pay to pay for purchases using the iPhone 6 or Apple Watch at hundreds of thousands of participating merchants. Apple Pay also allows in-app purchases on iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 in addition to iPhone 6. These are the latest banks to join the Apple Pay party:
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Users of Apple Pay in the UK can now spend an extra £10 per contactless transaction, bringing the limit up to a total of £30, thanks to new contactless policy. Until today, the maximum spend on almost all Apple Pay transactions was £20. The £30 total now exceeds the average cost of a supermarket trip making it possible for UK Apple users to take advantage of Apple Pay at more places.

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Apple today announced a new partnership with PayAnywhere, a credit card reader that serves more than 300,000 locations around the United States. As part of the partnership, the latest version of the PayAnywhere reader will also be sold in all Apple Stores beginning this September for $39.95.

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Coin, the company behind the innovative electronic card that aimed to consolidate your wallet into a single card, has today announced the 2.0 version of its offering. The first iteration of Coin began shipping in April 2015 and anyone who owns the first generation of the product is eligible for a free upgrade to Coin 2.0. Coin 2.0 includes a variety of enhancements, most important of which comes with the addition of NFC.

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While Apple has been mostly mum on the numbers behind Apple Watch sales so far, Best Buy is standing behind the iPhone maker’s general message that the Apple Watch has been a hit with customers. The electronics retailer started selling Apple Watches this month in select stores, first in the United States and later in Canada, and today Best Buy’s CEO Hubert Joly said Apple Watch demand has been “so strong” both online and in stores as the retailer plans to carry the smartwatch at even more locations.
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Further expanding on its recent “If it’s not an iPhone, it’s not an iPhone” ad campaign, Apple today has uploaded a new iPhone ad to its YouTube channel. This ad highlights Apple Pay, Apple’s contactless payment solution. The ad marks the first time Apple itself has advertised Apple Pay, although some banks and credit cards have run Apple Pay ads independently.

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Over a dozen more banks and credit unions around the United States have turned on support for Apple Pay in Apple’s mid-August update. The latest additions follow a larger rollout to over 40 institutions around the country earlier this month and Apple Pay’s first international debut in the UK last month. These are the latest banks to support Apple Pay plus the full list so far:
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A new survey of Apple Watch owners by Wristly found that 80% of those in the US and UK have already used Apple Pay, and suggests that this number could eventually hit 95%. The survey was limited to the two countries where Apple Pay is currently available.

The firm found that only 19% of Watch owners hadn’t yet tried Apple Pay, and of those only a quarter of them either had concerns or saw no benefits, suggesting that the rest were likely to try it at some later point.

The data also found that owning an Apple Watch dramatically increased the chances of using Apple Pay … 
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It appears that the expansion of Apple Pay into Australia could be farther off than some had hoped. According to a report today from The Sydney Morning Herald, Apple is in negotiations with at least four of the largest banks in Australia in order to form partnerships for Apple Pay in in the region. However, the report claims Apple is having issues in negotiations centered around the fees it collects from the currently supported Apple Pay markets of the United States and United Kingdom.

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Nearly one year after launching its first devices with NFC chips, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, to enable the Apple Pay mobile payments system, Apple has joined the official NFC Forum as a top-tier sponsor. Along with the sponsorship role, Apple has joined the forum’s Board of Directors, according to the forum’s official website. The site lists representation from Aon Mujtaba, a Director on Apple’s Wireless Systems Engineering team for the iPhone. Paula Hunter, the NFC Forum’s Director, made the announcement by saying that the organization is “delighted to welcome Apple to [its] board of directors as an NFC Forum sponsor member.”

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