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Apple Pay gains support for Chime online bank, Chase offers free Clapton album

Apple Pay on Thursday picked up support for Chime, a U.S. online-only bank, while the brick-and-mortar Chase Bank promised to give away a new Eric Clapton album to Apple Pay users.

Chime's Visa-based cards can be added to Apple Pay automatically by scanning them with the iOS Wallet app, or by going through Chime to add them manually. Once this is done, the bank's cards can be used like any other option in Wallet.

Apple Pay currently supports several online-only banks, two other American examples being Ally and Simple.

The Chase offer requires that people have a Chase Visa card registered in Apple Pay, and then log into the Chase Mobile app from a compatible iPhone on May 20 so they can tap a banner at the bottom of their account screen. This will eventually take customers to a redemption offer, and launch iTunes to download the Clapton album, I Still Do.

Banks will periodically launch promotions to encourage Apple Pay use. Although they pay a fee to Apple for each transaction, the service is generally considered more secure than traditional credit and debit transactions, which may end up saving money by reducing fraud.