Two Austrian banks say Apple Pay is at last 'coming soon'

Over four years since it launched in the U.S., Apple Pay is finally on its way to Austria, two banks announced on Tuesday.

The country's biggest bank, Erste Bank und Sparkasse, promised that the platform was "coming soon" via a post on Twitter. Hours later N26, a German-based mobile bank, made a similar promise in an English-language tweet.

Three of Austria's neighbors already offer Apple Pay, namely Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. It's not uncommon for shoppers to cross borders in the region thanks to the low travel restrictions of the European Union — people driving in from Germany will only see a sign that they've switched countries.

Apple Pay was one of the tentpoles of Monday's press event, specifically the Apple Card, created in conjunction with Goldman Sachs. While intended to be almost exclusively digital, people will also be able to get a real-world card made of titanium, lacking identifiers like a number, CVV, expiration date, or even a signature. To see those, people will have to turn to the Wallet app.

Apple also highlighted the fact that Apple Pay is now in 40 countries, and accepted by 70 percent of merchants in the U.S., with plans for metro network support in Chicago, Portland, and New York City. Merchant adoption is allegedly a whopping 99 percent in Australia.

7 Comments

wood1208 2930 comments · 10 Years

About 5 years ago

If you have iPhone and credit cards than use ApplePay where available. Convenient and secured. Now with Apple Credit Card, life can be better. Drop all other credit cards and get one, Apple Card.

miisha 6 comments · 12 Years

Apple Pay is already enabled also in Czech Republic – another neighbor of Austria.

SpamSandwich 32917 comments · 19 Years

“Apfel Pay”

rcfa 1123 comments · 17 Years

wood1208 said:

If you have iPhone and credit cards than use ApplePay where available. Convenient and secured. Now with Apple Credit Card, life can be better. Drop all other credit cards and get one, Apple Card.

Bad advice: you drop your current credit cards, and your credit rating will take a nosedive, first because your oldest credit account will disappear, and you’re left with only a single, recently opened account, and second you’re needlessly reducing the total amount of credit extended to you.

One can use ApplePay for many years in Austria: better and at considerably higher percentage of locations than in the US, provided you have a foreign credit card and are using it in Austria.
So acceptance of ApplePay hasn’t been an issue for a long time.
It’s just that Austrian card issuers didn’t play along and were betting on the contactless payment features built in their physical cards.