If you’re frustrated by the limited number of retailers supporting Apple Pay, there’s hope from across the Atlantic. New figures reported by the Guardian show that there were more than a billion contactless payments in the UK last year, accounting for one in six of all card transactions.
Apple is continuing to sign more banks and credit unions up every few weeks to support Apple Pay, and the latest expansion in the United States includes another 40 new partners to back the company’s mobile payment service. Check below to see the latest banks to go live:
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While some were waiting eagerly for the Apple Watch, and others got assimilated, there are still those who prefer traditional watches. That’s the market Sony hopes to appeal to with a new hybrid watch called Wena (which apparently stands for ‘wear electronics naturally’), which it’s pitching on its Japanese crowdfunding site First Flight.
It’s mostly a traditional analogue watch, but a link to an iOS app gives it limited smartwatch functionality. On the smartwatch side, you get fitness band functionality, and notifications are echoed to the watch in the form of an LED and vibration …
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Update: Home Depot says it plans to accept Apple Pay in the near future.
Home Depot appears to have quietly stopped accepting Apple Pay. Although never officially named as a partner, the company has supported contactless payment and Apple Pay used to work in at least some of its stores. An Apple support document updated last week lists Home Depot as one of the stores that “might not currently be set up” to accept Apple Pay.
The change appears to be related to Home Depot’s deal to accept PayPal as a payment method both in store and online …
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Apple unveiled its mobile payment service Apple Pay last September alongside the iPhone 6 and Apple Watch later rolling it out to new iPhone users in October through the free iOS 8.1 software update. Dozens of banks and credit unions have flipped the switch on Apple Pay since then as more merchants have announced support or plans to accept the new payment method.
Apple Pay, which allows users to securely pay in stores using the latest models of the iPhone simply by placing the smartphone near a special terminal, uses your existing credit or debit card without revealing personal information like your name or card number to merchants.
In practice, Apple Pay is a real delight to use as a payment method as it feels a bit like you’re skipping the payment process altogether; I imagine moving from cash and checks to debit and credit cards years ago felt similar. There’s still a social oddity about paying with your phone in many parts of the United States in 2015, though, which I’m not sure happened with the transition to using cards.
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Apple announced Starbucks as an Apple Pay partner when it unveiled the mobile payment system last fall, and today the coffee chain is beginning to roll out support for Apple Pay through the latest version of its iPhone app.
While Starbucks does not yet accept Apple Pay in its brick-and-mortar stores, customers have long been able to pay with the iPhone app in stores using a digital Starbucks Card barcode scanned by a barista. Starting today, customers can load credit to a Starbucks Card within the app using Apple Pay as a payment method.
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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMw_rr3OYYw]
It’s no surprise that the three major card companies in the US have been taking advantage of being the first with Apple Pay out the door and that the majority of their latest ads and promotions have centered around the new payment service. The latest comes from American Express with a just released ad focusing on highlighting Apple Pay as “The Next Evolution of Membership.”
Last month Apple rolled out support for dozens of banks and credit unions with Apple Pay bringing the count to more than 45 institutions, and today Apple is out with the first wave of the month adding more than a dozen new banks to its list of supported Apple Pay banks bringing the total count to over 60 institutions. Here are the new banks listed as supporting Apple Pay as of today:
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