Apple Pay's international expansion continues with more banks in China & Russia

Apple on Tuesday updated its roster of banks and credit unions supporting Apple Pay with additions in China and Russia, extending the platform's international footprint even further.

There are four new Russian institutions, namely Otkritie, Rocketbank, Russian Standard Bank, and Tochka. In China though there are nine new entries, adding to the dozens already present:

Bank of Xi An
Baoshang Bank Co., Ltd.
China Guangfa Bank
China Merchants Bank
China Zheshang Bank Co., Ltd.
Guangzhou Rural Commercial Bank Co., Ltd.
Ningbo Yinzhou Rural Cooperative Bank Co., Ltd.
Qingdao Bank Co., Ltd.
Zhejiang Rural Credit Union Co., Ltd.

Earlier in November, a deal with Cuscal brought Apple Pay to over 30 Australian banks, even as others continued to boycott the platform over access to the NFC chips in Apple devices. These could let third parties offer retail payments as convenient as Apple Pay, but Apple has claimed that the banks are only interested in preventing competition while they work on their own systems.

Another recent addition was France's Orange Cash, actually a service provided by the country's namesake wireless carrier.