Apple Pay gains 30 more US banks amid wait for more retail chains

Apple on Tuesday updated the roster of U.S. banks supporting Apple Pay with another 30 entries, while shoppers continued to wait for more retail partners to come onboard.

As is now common, the new banks are primarily small-scale institutions dedicated to a particular state, county, city, or employer. One of these, for example, is the San Diego Firefighters Federal Credit Union, which serves only the city's firefighters and their families.

A notable change is that the University of Wisconsin Credit Union is now on the list as "UW Credit Union" instead of its full name. In its place is the University of Toledo Federal Credit Union.

The full list of additions includes:

Alabama State Employees Credit Union
American National Bank
Bank of the South
Cabrillo Credit Union
California Credit Union
Classic Federal Credit Union
Denali Federal Credit Union
Dort Federal Credit Union
First Federal Community Bank
First Green Bank
First National Bank of Catlin
First Oklahoma Federal Credit Union
First US Bank
FMBank
Gerber Federal Credit Union
MassMutual Federal Credit Union
Members Source Credit Union
Morris County National Bank
Muna Federal Credit Union
Rocky Mountain Law Enforcement Federal Credit Union
Sabine Federal Credit Union
San Diego Firefighters Federal Credit Union
Scott Credit Union
Security National Bank of Omaha
Sound Credit Union
Standing Stone Bank
UW Credit Union
Vista Bank
Webster Bank
Workers Credit Union

U.S. merchants have slowly signed on since Apple Pay launched in October 2014. A number of additions have been promised for 2016, like Chili's, Chick-fil-A, Dunkin' Donuts, and JCPenney, but most of these have yet to happen, and some retail chains that signed on a long time ago — Anthropologie and Forever 21 — are still sitting on Apple's "coming soon" list.

27 Comments

ValueAnalyst 32 comments · 8 Years

About 8 years ago

It baffles me that Apple is focused on adding more banks when CLEARLY the roadblock in front of Apple Pay is lack of vendor support. When can I leave my cards home?

rob53 3307 comments · 13 Years

About 8 years ago

ValueAnalyst said:

It baffles me that Apple is focused on adding more banks when CLEARLY the roadblock in front of Apple Pay is lack of vendor support. When can I leave my cards home?

It's actually merchant support. I was at Costco this morning asking about the conversion from Amex to Citibank and asked about ApplePay and chipped cards. Costco takes neither, which surprised about not using chipped cards. Of course I wasn't talking to anyone who really knows anything other than discussing the credit card conversion but she said she didn't want to use SamsungPay on her Galaxy. I tried explaining the benefits of either one and she quickly shut down, she wasn't ready to even try and understand something other than swiping a card. Expand this to the other millions of people who are technically challenged (like politicians, police, and judges) and you see the situation Apple is in. It's relatively easy for Apple to get banks to get on board because the backend part of ApplePay is straightforward. It's the merchant end that's causing issues, mainly because merchants rarely want to spend any money on IT and once something is working, they don't want to pay to change it. I've given up worrying about Home Depot ever turning NFC back on and am simply happy when I find a store that's tech savvy enough (I hate this term) to know how to turn it on and what it means to their customers.

daye 18 comments · 12 Years

About 8 years ago

Apple should persuade more retailers to accept Apple Pay. Apple should make P2P /ATM on Apple Pay.

rogifan_new 4297 comments · 9 Years

About 8 years ago

The lack of broader merchant support is a failure of Pay IMO. I'm lucky that my local grocery store supports it. And yea for Whole Foods, Trader Joes and Panarw but that's about it.