Roger Fingas
Apple has updated its roster of Apple Pay card issuers with dozens of new entries, mostly in the U.S., but also some in Canada, Russia, and Japan.
Most of the new U.S. entries are regional banks and credit unions, reflecting the fact that most national firms were onboard within a year of Apple Pay's Oct. 2014 launch. The one exception in this instance is a carrier service, T-Mobile Money.
Japanese shoppers can now use UCS cards, and added Canadian institutions include Affinity Credit Union, Collabria Financial Services, Conexus Credit Union, and Envision Financial, the last a part of First West Credit Union.
In Russia, new options include Home Credit Bank, National Standard Bank, both Visa and Mastercard at Chelyabinvestbank, and Visa cards at the Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
The full list of U.S. additions is below:
- Century Bank of Georgia
- Fairfield Federal Savings and Loan
- Farmers & Merchants Bank of Ashland
- Farmers State Bank of Alto Pass
- First State Bank of the Southeast
- HNB Bank
- Interaudi Bank
- Kohler Credit Union
- New Horizons Credit Union
- Optum Bank
- Pantex Federal Credit Union
- Peoples Bank & Trust Company
- Pioneer Trust Bank, N.A.
- Professional Bank
- Security Credit Union
- South Story Bank & Trust
- T-Mobile Money
- Texoma Community Credit Union
- Time Federal Savings Bank
- TVA Community Credit Union
- Washington Federal
This week Apple officially launched Apple Pay Cash, which lets people send and receive money through the Messages apps for iOS 11.2 and watchOS 4.2.
Charles Martin
Christine McKee
Oliver Haslam
6 Comments
I thought T-Mobile Money folded over a year ago?
I expect that 99% of US credit card holders were covered by Apple Pay within the first year. The fact is that a few major players in the payment card market completely dominate the wallets in the US. Yeah, I suppose it's nice that someone with a checking account at Texoma Community Credit Union can now link that to ApplePay, but he or she probably already has a CapitalOne card (or the like) as well. So, in my opinion these stories about new banks being added are completely uninteresting--unless your dinky little bank makes the list. The thing that will make or break ApplePay is getting the holdouts (like Target and CVS to name the two I deal will regularly) on board in a very public way. Until ApplePay is as ubiquitous as Visa and Mastercard (or at least American Express), it's going to be a mostly irrelevant niche. I wonder what percent of American iPhone users have ever used ApplePay.
If I think about it, the answer is probably a pretty big number because of online transactions. And maybe that's the key. Perhaps we (I) are focusing too much on face-to-face, brick-and-mortar ApplePay transactions when less and less commercial transactions take place that way. But if the same companies dominate ecommerce then the original point remains: Apple, do whatever it takes to develop marke tshare for ApplePay. This is one area where market share matters since it directly affects the value of the service itself.
My main pain with Apple Pay in Canada is its silly 100$ limit, it's processed just like any other contactless payment. That limit is a wise decision for Tap to Pay cards with no personal validation whatsoever, but is absolutely ridiculous with practically failsafe biometric security.
Our banks are very slow adopters, it took 18 months just to get Apple Pay. They're either too greedy, lazy or just plain stupid to realize that the added fraud security benefit on larger purchases should outweigh whatever additional small fee required.