Roger Fingas
Apple Pay should be launching in Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and the United Arab Emirates within a matter of days, and the service is also arriving at more U.S. merchants, platform executive Jennifer Bailey revealed at Sunday's Money 20/20 conference.
With the latest additions, Apple Pay is now in 20 countries and has some 4,000 issuers, Bailey remarked, according to iMore. Where available, the platform is said to account for 90 percent of mobile contactless payments.
Bailey also announced that U.S. grocery firm Albertsons Companies is deploying Apple Pay to 2,300 stores, including the recently confirmed Safeway branches. Dick's Sporting Goods has gone live with the technology at 675 locations, and Saks Fifth Avenue is beginning a rollout as well.
Ticketmaster is meanwhile working to offer Wallet passes across all of its locations. The option lets people store tickets on their iPhone or Apple Watch, which can then be scanned when entering a venue.
Bailey further acknowledged that thousands of Apple workers have been testing person-to-person payments, a feature originally expected to debut alongside iOS 11 in September. Shortly before that, the company admitted it would only be coming later this fall — the technology is now likely to launch with iOS 11.1, already deep into beta testing.
Two more countries, Poland and the Netherlands, could get Apple Pay later this year if rumors prove correct.
Charles Martin
Malcolm Owen
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7 Comments
Can't wait to get Apple Pay here in Sweden, problem is only that there are only a very few contactless terminals available which makes the whole thing kinda pointless. :neutral:
Ticketmaster is such a turd of a company.
Here in the US, (CA in particular) my local Safeway store accepts Apple Pay (and probably other NFC platforms) now, but there's been absolutely no announcement at the store nor is there any indication at or near the POS terminal that any NFC payments are accepted. You hold your device to the display (which also gives no indication) and you and the checker see 'paid' or whatever on your respective screens.
I still had to enter my PIN but even so, the transaction was very quick. I look forward to more retailers supporting Apple Pay.
Since I was tired of waiting for ApplePay to arrive here in Germany, I finally gave up and went down the “boon” road. Installation was a bit tricky, but finally got it to work on phone and watch. Still can’t sit for the official rollout, though.
Edit: on a side note: another thing I gave up with was not having an Apple Watch. Went for the 3 out of technical curiosity and for no specific purpose.
After a bit more than one week I already don’t want to miss it anymore. Kicks me to be more active, I love the ubibstrusive notifications, tracking and navigation is excellent. The battery lasts easily a day. Now, at 8:30 pm it’s down to 74%. Most of the day it’s on WiFi. LTE Signal is good. But sound quality of a call is superb. I called once while biking without headphones and leaving my arm in the steering while driving. Sound quality according to the other end was excellent, on par with headphones. Actually with fewer ambient wind noise. Amazing piece of technology.