Apple Pay

Walgreens announced this morning that support for accepting its rewards card in stores through Apple Pay is now live. Loyalty cards have long been supported using QR cards with scannable barcodes, but iOS 9 enabled the ability to use loyalty cards with NFC just like Apple Pay payments. Walgreens notes that it’s the first retailer to make use of this feature. Other chains including Dunkin’ Donuts and Panera Bread are expected to follow.
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With Apple Pay over a year old now in the United States, we’re still seeing Apple add new partner banks and credit unions across the country to support its mobile payment service. In the latest expansion, over 50 additional participating partners have been added to now work with Apple Pay on iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Still waiting for your bank to make the jump? These are the latest to join:
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With Apple Pay, Google Wallet and other services transforming the way people carry out transactions, Apple has joined forces with four other companies to ensure that lawmakers don’t end up ‘inadvertently’ stifling innovation in the financial services field.

Technology industry leaders Amazon, Apple, Google, Intuit and PayPal today announced the formation of Financial Innovation Now, a coalition that will promote policies to help foster greater innovation in financial services.

While the new organization uses relatively diplomatic language, it’s pretty clear that the aim is to ensure that politicians don’t screw things up by introducing poorly thought-out legislation, like the infamous example proposed by Democratic Rep. Joshua Peters … 
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On its earnings call, Apple has announced a further expansion of Apple Pay in partnership with American Express, to Australia and Canada in 2015 as well as Spain, Singapore and Hong Kong next year in 2016. Exact details are still murky — Tim Cook very specifically said ‘eligible American Express customers in these regions’ so it isn’t going to be as big as a rollout for Apple Pay as we saw for the US or UK.

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Yet another bank has announced today that it is launching its own mobile payment solution. At the Money20/20 conference in Las Vegas today, Chase announced that it is launching Chase Pay. Chase Pay is digital wallet solution similar to Apple Pay that allows users to pay with their phones at retail locations and online (via Re/code).

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[Update 10/27: Apple Pay through American Express in Canada and Australia coming this year; Spain, Singapore, and Hong Kong next year.]

Apple Watch may have first launched all the way back in April, but the roll out in more countries around the world is still taking place. Availability for India now appears to have an official date with Apple’s website confirming a release scheduled for early next month on November 6th.

Details are limited on Apple Watch pricing and retail availability just yet, as only the date has been added to the India listing. The news comes as Apple CEO Tim Cook met with India’s Prime Minister last month, discussing Apple Pay and possibly bringing Apple Stores to the country, which would require manufacturing in the country, where Apple currently relies on resellers for distribution.

While Apple Watch is set to hit even more countries, signs that the Apple Pay could be expanding too have surfaced…
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Apple Pay is picking up a huge wave of newly added banks and credit unions across the United States to support the mobile payment service. Following a couple dozen more banks lighting up earlier this month, Apple has added over 70 additional participating banks to its list of active partners including HSBC in the US. These are the latest banks that now work with Apple Pay:
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After a quiet period between the last set of new banks and iOS 9’s public release, Apple has updated its list of Apple Pay participating banks to include more than two dozen more additions. If you bank with one of these banks or credit unions, you should now be able to setup Apple Pay in your Wallet app for use on supported iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watch:
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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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