Apple Pay coming to Australia this year

David Swan
OCTOBER 28, 2015
THE AUSTRALIAN
Apple has just announced that its much-hyped payments service, Apple Pay, is heading to Australia later this year, at least for customers of American Express.
The tech giant used part of its Q4 earnings call, where it announced a quarterly profit rise of 31 per cent, that its partnership with American Express will expand to users in Australia and Canada in 2015 and Spain, Singapore and Hong Kong in 2016.
As first reported by tech blog 9to5Mac Apple chief Tim Cook said on the call that Apple Pay would be made available only to “eligible American Express customers in these regions”, and will therefore be a reduced rollout compared with users in the UK or the US.
The news comes as users reported earlier this month that Apple started adding Apple Pay icons to some business listings, like Woolworths for example, in Apple Maps, hinting that the service would be available soon here.
The rollout later this year will bring the total number of Apple Pay markets to four.
Apple Pay is a mobile payment and digital wallet offering allowing users to make payments with their iOS devices, including Apple Watch. At its launch in the US Apple said more than 1 million credit cards had been registered on Apple Pay in its first three days of availability.
“Our customers love their experience with Apple Pay and we want to bring it to as many of our users worldwide as possible,” said Jennifer Bailey, vice president of Apple Pay, in a statement. “With a global issuer like American Express, we are thrilled to seamlessly bring our easy, secure and private way to pay to more customers internationally.”