Roger Fingas
Apple Pay is reportedly launching in Switzerland next Monday, June 13 — the same day that WWDC kicks off, potentially signaling that an expansion throughout Europe could be announced.
The country's Cornèr Bank will be one of the first participating card issuers, Swiss site Finews claimed on Tuesday. It's not clear if other banks like Credit Suisse and UBS might be joining in. If they're not participating at launch, they could sign up later on.
In any case the possibility of Apple Pay in Switzerland has been public record since February, when Apple filed a trademark with the country's intellectual property office.
If Apple Pay does launch in Switzerland next Monday, it's possible the debut could be tied to a larger series of announcements related to the mobile transaction service. Apple is set to hold a keynote presentation to kick off its annual Worldwide developers conference that same day at 10 a.m., which would be an opportune time for Apple to announce expanded Apple Pay availability.
The service's footprint in Europe has so far been restricted to the U.K., as even a promised 2016 launch in Spain has yet to take place. In fact the only other regions with Apple Pay to date are Australia, Canada, Singapore, mainland China, and the United States. Hong Kong is also due later this year.
Rumors have hinted that Brazil, France, and Japan will get Apple Pay in the future. Apple itself though has only promised that it is "working rapidly" to launch in Asia and Europe, and eventually reach "every significant market" the company is in.
Christine McKee
Andrew Orr
Charles Martin
Marko Zivkovic
Wesley Hilliard
12 Comments
Apple pay in other countries is great and all. Apple really needs to focus on getting everyone using this in the US. I am sure some spots are better than others but half the time employees do not know how to use this and I end up walking them through it. When done right Apple pay is so seamless it is crazy to think we use credit cards or cash anymore. Not sure what the answer is to get wide adoption but I am in support of it.
From my experience of using ApplePay in Switzerland:
Who accepts it already:
- The two biggest supermarket chains, Coop & Migros and their multitude of goods and restaurant subsidiaries;
- Chevron (branded as Coop Pronto) gas stations (not at the pump though);
- Aldi (discount grocery);
- SPAR (big grocery chain in Austria);
- Jumbo (a big hardware and garden store);
- IKEA and IKEA restaurant;
- McDonalds;
- Kiosk (convenience store oft found at train stations);
- local specialty liquor and gourmet shop;
- local bike and Vespa shop;
- various local larger restaurants;
- my local barber, now semi-retired from a 10-chair hi-volume mall based shop to a little 2-chair shop in his home;
- some car dealers;
- seems almost anybody on the Sixt payment network;
Far as I know, still no-go;
- almost no gas stations (although some have NFC terminals, they don't appear to be active - BP, this is you!)
- Manor / Manora (big dept store and restaurant chain);
- Lidl (discount grocery);
- Otto's (odd lot grocery/dept store);
- busses or rail;
- medium and small individual restaurants;
- Subway (restaurants);
- Post Office
- government entities (DMV);
- phone, cable, electric companies;
- ski lifts (not sure about this due to not skiing last 2 years due to bad knee);
There are some home-grown solutions being pushed by the Post Office Bank and other entities that consist of CurrentC-like scanning of QR codes or contactless scanning of something (Twint), that I see but never looked into because these I see as solutions without a great future (obsolete tech like QR approach, or too little scale like Twint) given the rise of NFC based solutions like Apple Pay.
TL;DR? Summary:
- (My credit cards are US-based chip+sign version. If you have cards from a not-yet rolled-out Apple Pay nation, they won't work);
- (my iTunes account is US-based, but my region setting is for Switzerland. To enable my cards, on both IPhone and Watch, I switched region to USA, enabled cards, then switched back to Swiss region w/o disrupting Apple Pay functionality);
- Since Dec 2014, I've been using Apple Pay almost everywhere I shop;
- since last June, these transactions have been exclusively via my Apple Watch;
- I see more and more shops upgrading to NFC POS terminals;
- there are competing systems from Post Bank (IIRC Twint), UBS Bank (don't know name), Swisscom (has/had? something) and MC Pay-Pass (IIRC RF-chip stickers). (In order to survive, I expect some of these entities will exhibit their own "protectionist" approach as ApplePay et Alia forces consolidation among these national/regional offerings);
- 2-weeks ago I met one of the leading software integrators for POS software and had a long discussion about this tech. I was surprised when he said he thought Apple's reserving TouchID for Apple Pay was "protectionist" and had the impression he didn't fully understand the Apple Pay approach (I'm curious as to how he will view this announcement);
- Coop did a cool thing for their Supercard members: go to the online site and in your profile state that you don't want printed receipt and you will get a pdf receipt by mail.
Final comments:
- I'm essentially to the point where I don't really have to carry credit/Maestro cards anymore;
- I don't think merchants have yet embraced such payment as equivalent to chip+pin as above ca. 50 CHF I still have to sign the receipt.
- I'm gonna miss the look of surprise and amazement from some cashiers caused by my being the only person in my end of the country paying for stuff with my Apple Watch.
The absurdity is, I pay nearly everything with ApplePay in Austria, except in the few stores which don't accept credit cards at all.
i get surprised looks, questions etc. except where I'm a regular and thus known to pay that way.
The infrastructure is there, the card issuers are not.
In the US it's reversed: almost all cards support ApplePay, but most vendors don't have the required NFC terminals, particularly not the roaming ones that come to the table in restaurants, can't really do ApplePay when the vendors need to take your card to the POS...
It still escapes me why Apple didn't aggressively pursue rolling out ApplePay where the required infrastructure is in place, it's years of revenues and sales lost...
So I might benefit from Apple pay here in Finland in about 5 years. That's how long it took Siri to start speaking Finnish. And now when she does, it is pretty bad. I've been thinking about changing back to the english Siri since I speak pretty good english and she understands commands that way much better.