German banks holding out on Apple Pay adding support later in 2019

German savings bank association Volksbanken Raiffeisenbanken will roll out support for Apple Pay later this year, with support for EC cards to follow afterward.

Volksbanken Raiffeisenbanken, an association of German savings banks and cooperative banks, will support Apple Pay in 2019. While there is no specific date mentioned, the service should start "later this year," said Jennifer Bailey, Apple's vice president of internet services. Other German banks have already begun to adopt Apple Pay.

"The ink is dry," the Federal Association of German Banks wrote on Twitter, "The Volksbanken Raiffeisenbanken will offer their customers Apple Pay later this year."

Die Tinte ist trocken: Die Volksbanken Raiffeisenbanken werden ihren Kunden im Laufe des Jahres #ApplePay anbieten. @BVRPresse pic.twitter.com/EKQ0ewZuc6
— BVR (@BVRPresse) June 26, 2019

According to an article at Heise Online, the EC card, or Euro-Cheque card, will not be supported at launch. Girocard, the producers and managers of EC cards, will need to do some work on their end before integration can happen.

Many banks had originally held out on adopting Apple Pay.

9 Comments

frantisek 11 Years · 760 comments

About 5 years ago

Nothing special. It is like here. Number of banks will add support during this year. They knew about that years but no hurry. :-)

spheric 9 Years · 2705 comments

Hello Sparkasse...?

almacme 9 Years · 2 comments

The Raiffeisen bank in Switzerland is also holding out on ApplePay. They have been trying to gain time for a local solution called Twint. I am surprised there has been no legal challenge against the major banks for anticompetitive methods. When Raiffeisen messaged me encouraging me to use Twint, I replied I preferred to use ApplePay. To which they twice replied ApplePay wasn’t available in Switzerland. This was untrue as ads for ApplePay with one credit card provider proved.

superkloton 9 Years · 86 comments

spheric said:

Hello Sparkasse...?

Also announced for later this year.
https://twitter.com/sparkasse/status/1143791454625472512

robertwalter 9 Years · 276 comments

almacme said:

The Raiffeisen bank in Switzerland is also holding out on ApplePay. They have been trying to gain time for a local solution called Twint. I am surprised there has been no legal challenge against the major banks for anticompetitive methods. When Raiffeisen messaged me encouraging me to use Twint, I replied I preferred to use ApplePay. To which they twice replied ApplePay wasn’t available in Switzerland. This was untrue as ads for ApplePay with one credit card provider proved.

Most of the card offers here in CH are pretty lousy with annual fees and only a handful of banks (regional, none of the biggies until Credit Suisse and it’s AECS cards announced they were going to support Apple Pay.)

But the rest of the Twint Kartell (UBS, ZKB, Post Finance, most other cantonal banks besides GKB and IIRC AKB), under investigation subsequent to WiKo (Economic Commission) raids half a year ago, are still blocking AP in CH and FL.

What I’m hoping for is that Apple, having grown frustrated by the banks world wide (outside the US) obstructing AP ((with customers moving to the few offering banks, while significant and thus causing a few more banks to join AP, the transition was too slow, and this wonderful (surprise and delight) strategic feature was not benefiting folks with iPhones as competitors were catching up and passing, and tempting folks to consider competitor’s products)) Apple decided to goose regional uptake by offering the Apple Card.

I’m hoping that the recent European AP build outs presage a quick roll out of the Apple Card in these markets such that to prevent the loss of card businesses, and or customers, banks will clamor to support AP with competitive (annual fees, buyers insurance, etc) Credit, Debit (Maestro/EC) card offerings. (Due to the smaller transaction fees in Europe, “competitive” won’t likely be on the same level as in the states in terms of loyalty rewards.)

Back to CH: an interesting partner in the Twint Kartell is Coop, one of the top 2 grocery conglomerates in CH, half a year ago, they dropped their long time credit card partner (AECS = Credit Suisse) for a new partner (TopCard = UBS) without requiring AP as a part of the deal (in meantime, the outgoing partner has rolled out a similar looking card with AP). Point is, Coop didn’t demand AP because they would really prefer customers use their Twint service because by hindering AP, and forcing Twint, coop can save on credit and debit card interchange fees and earn a percent or two on the transaction.

Regarding twint uptake, far as I can see, the Twint organization talks about the installed customer base more than anything else, not about the number of transactions. I suspect that much of the installed base is install, maybe use once and forget (but because it is BT/camera/QR based, instead of NFC, it is clumsy) and folks revert to using tap to pay plastic.)

I’ve asked quite a few cashiers here if people are using these systems, and some use iPhone AP, fewer use Apple Watch AP, some use Samsung Pay and nobody uses Twint. A funny comment from one “some genius spent millions in this system and nobody ever uses it”.

To me the proof of Twint’s current failure to gain traction is that the purchase incentives offered by the Kartell as well as contest prizes have been steadily increasing over the last few years. There has also been continuous Twint management turnover these past couple of years.

My feeling is that Twint is moribund like CurrentC was in the US a couple years ago. If general AP uptake in CH increases (along with things like Samsung and Google Pay), I can see merchants begin to offer AP in their Co-branded cards.

I think the WiKo investigation and a hoped for Apple Card roll out will break the Twint Kartell logjam here in CH (Switzerland).

We’ll see!