Apple Pay coming to long-time holdout UBS soon

UBS will finally end its holdout from adopting Apple Pay in the coming weeks as other payment solutions fall out of favor.

Apple Pay saw slow adoption among the Swiss banking industry, until their boycott and reliance on a single mobile pay solution lead to antitrust investigations. Starting in 2016, Swiss banks slowly started moving away from "Twint," their home-grown mobile payment system of choice, and allowed Apple Pay for their customers. Most of the major banks had adopted Apple's service, with a very large exception in UBS.

The bank made announcements via Twitter and Facebook ahead of its release, suggesting that it could launch Apple Pay support within the next few weeks.

Wir freuen uns, Apple Pay bald in unser bestndig wachsendes Angebot an mobilen Zahlungslsungen aufzunehmen. pic.twitter.com/1Q7467MD10
— UBS Schweiz (@UBSschweiz) April 24, 2020

A report from MacPrime detailed the slow transition of Swiss banks from their own solutions to Apple Pay. It appears that constant consumer pressure and antitrust investigations into consolidated payment solutions being used by the Swiss banks finally pushed UBS into adopting Apple Pay.

Apple Pay launched in 2014 as a contactless payment system for iPhone, and was presented as a fast and easy way to pay for things at the register. It later came to Apple Watch once launched in 2015, to further simplify payments. By 2016 Apple had moved Apple Pay to the web, which allowed users to pay using their Watch in tandem with their Mac, or Touch ID on Touch Bar enabled MacBook Pros.

18 Comments

Bart Y 73 comments · 6 Years

About 4 years ago

‘Bout time. Wish continued success for Apple Pay around the world and that Apple user ask for their banks and merchants to allow it .

Same for Apple Watch health apps like heart monitoring and ECG with countries’ Health Departments, although many are quite busy right now.

melgross 33607 comments · 20 Years

It’s still not very common on the web. And eBay, which early last year promised that by the end of the year most all transactions would be available via Apple Pay, has not kept their word. I buy a fair number of things there, and I only very rarely see Apple Pay as an option. It’s still almost all PayPal.

ihatescreennames 1971 comments · 19 Years

melgross said:

It’s still not very common on the web. And eBay, which early last year promised that by the end of the year most all transactions would be available via Apple Pay, has not kept their word. I buy a fair number of things there, and I only very rarely see Apple Pay as an option. It’s still almost all PayPal.

I thought that eBay said they would start the roll-out by the end of 2019 and didn’t put an end date on the completion. I’m with you, I rarely see Apple Pay as an option on eBay. Is there a good reason Apple Pay couldn’t be rolled out site-wide on the same day? I really don’t know.

I wish AP was available on the web more. I find it odd that Target accepts AP in their stores and in their app but not on their website. I’m sure there are other examples of that same inconsistent Apple Pay support.

coffeetin 5 comments · 4 Years

I’m pretty sure Walmart has yet to accept Apple Pay as well. They still continue to use their own proprietary app which is just plan stupid.

coffeetin said:

I’m pretty sure Walmart has yet to accept Apple Pay as well. They still continue to use their own proprietary app which is just plan stupid.

That’s a large part of why I won’t shop there. If I can use Apple Pay at one retailer and not at another, similar retailer, I go to the one that accepts AP. I feel like I’m in the minority on that, though, because if I wasn’t more places would be rushing to accept AP.