Apple Pay expansion could coincide with WWDC, Switzerland launch rumored for June 13
Apple Pay is reportedly launching in Switzerland next Monday, June 13 -- the same day that WWDC kicks off, potentially signaling that an expansion throughout Europe could be announced.
The country's Corn?r Bank will be one of the first participating card issuers, Swiss site Finews claimed on Tuesday. It's not clear if other banks like Credit Suisse and UBS might be joining in. If they're not participating at launch, they could sign up later on.
In any case the possibility of Apple Pay in Switzerland has been public record since February, when Apple filed a trademark with the country's intellectual property office.
If Apple Pay does launch in Switzerland next Monday, it's possible the debut could be tied to a larger series of announcements related to the mobile transaction service. Apple is set to hold a keynote presentation to kick off its annual Worldwide developers conference that same day at 10 a.m., which would be an opportune time for Apple to announce expanded Apple Pay availability.
The service's footprint in Europe has so far been restricted to the U.K., as even a promised 2016 launch in Spain has yet to take place. In fact the only other regions with Apple Pay to date are Australia, Canada, Singapore, mainland China, and the United States. Hong Kong is also due later this year.
Rumors have hinted that Brazil, France, and Japan will get Apple Pay in the future. Apple itself though has only promised that it is "working rapidly" to launch in Asia and Europe, and eventually reach "every significant market" the company is in.
The country's Corn?r Bank will be one of the first participating card issuers, Swiss site Finews claimed on Tuesday. It's not clear if other banks like Credit Suisse and UBS might be joining in. If they're not participating at launch, they could sign up later on.
In any case the possibility of Apple Pay in Switzerland has been public record since February, when Apple filed a trademark with the country's intellectual property office.
If Apple Pay does launch in Switzerland next Monday, it's possible the debut could be tied to a larger series of announcements related to the mobile transaction service. Apple is set to hold a keynote presentation to kick off its annual Worldwide developers conference that same day at 10 a.m., which would be an opportune time for Apple to announce expanded Apple Pay availability.
The service's footprint in Europe has so far been restricted to the U.K., as even a promised 2016 launch in Spain has yet to take place. In fact the only other regions with Apple Pay to date are Australia, Canada, Singapore, mainland China, and the United States. Hong Kong is also due later this year.
Rumors have hinted that Brazil, France, and Japan will get Apple Pay in the future. Apple itself though has only promised that it is "working rapidly" to launch in Asia and Europe, and eventually reach "every significant market" the company is in.
Comments
Who accepts it already:
- The two biggest supermarket chains, Coop & Migros and their multitude of goods and restaurant subsidiaries;
- Chevron (branded as Coop Pronto) gas stations (not at the pump though);
- Aldi (discount grocery);
- SPAR (big grocery chain in Austria);
- Jumbo (a big hardware and garden store);
- IKEA and IKEA restaurant;
- McDonalds;
- Kiosk (convenience store oft found at train stations);
- local specialty liquor and gourmet shop;
- local bike and Vespa shop;
- various local larger restaurants;
- my local barber, now semi-retired from a 10-chair hi-volume mall based shop to a little 2-chair shop in his home;
- some car dealers;
- seems almost anybody on the Sixt payment network;
Far as I know, still no-go;
- almost no gas stations (although some have NFC terminals, they don't appear to be active - BP, this is you!)
- Manor / Manora (big dept store and restaurant chain);
- Lidl (discount grocery);
- Otto's (odd lot grocery/dept store);
- busses or rail;
- medium and small individual restaurants;
- Subway (restaurants);
- Post Office
- government entities (DMV);
- phone, cable, electric companies;
- ski lifts (not sure about this due to not skiing last 2 years due to bad knee);
There are some home-grown solutions being pushed by the Post Office Bank and other entities that consist of CurrentC-like scanning of QR codes or contactless scanning of something (Twint), that I see but never looked into because these I see as solutions without a great future (obsolete tech like QR approach, or too little scale like Twint) given the rise of NFC based solutions like Apple Pay.
TL;DR? Summary:
- (My credit cards are US-based chip+sign version. If you have cards from a not-yet rolled-out Apple Pay nation, they won't work);
- (my iTunes account is US-based, but my region setting is for Switzerland. To enable my cards, on both IPhone and Watch, I switched region to USA, enabled cards, then switched back to Swiss region w/o disrupting Apple Pay functionality);
- Since Dec 2014, I've been using Apple Pay almost everywhere I shop;
- since last June, these transactions have been exclusively via my Apple Watch;
- I see more and more shops upgrading to NFC POS terminals;
- there are competing systems from Post Bank (IIRC Twint), UBS Bank (don't know name), Swisscom (has/had? something) and MC Pay-Pass (IIRC RF-chip stickers). (In order to survive, I expect some of these entities will exhibit their own "protectionist" approach as ApplePay et Alia forces consolidation among these national/regional offerings);
- 2-weeks ago I met one of the leading software integrators for POS software and had a long discussion about this tech. I was surprised when he said he thought Apple's reserving TouchID for Apple Pay was "protectionist" and had the impression he didn't fully understand the Apple Pay approach (I'm curious as to how he will view this announcement);
- Coop did a cool thing for their Supercard members: go to the online site and in your profile state that you don't want printed receipt and you will get a pdf receipt by mail.
Final comments:
- I'm essentially to the point where I don't really have to carry credit/Maestro cards anymore;
- I don't think merchants have yet embraced such payment as equivalent to chip+pin as above ca. 50 CHF I still have to sign the receipt.
- I'm gonna miss the look of surprise and amazement from some cashiers caused by my being the only person in my end of the country paying for stuff with my Apple Watch.
Where Apple can move the ball forward is by continuing to sign up the straggling banks and credit unions as well as getting online merchants to add an Apple Pay button to their web sites.
Customers will will slowly force adoption of Apple Pay when they vote with their wallets.
On the 20th, Costo will switch from exclusively accepting AMEX to exclusively accepting VISA. I'm hoping (for the sake of my mom and sister) that Costco will also start sporting the kinds of NFC POS payment terminals they have been advertising to their business customers for neigh on 2 years and in so doing accept ApplePay facilitated transactions.
i get surprised looks, questions etc. except where I'm a regular and thus known to pay that way.
The infrastructure is there, the card issuers are not.
In the US it's reversed: almost all cards support ApplePay, but most vendors don't have the required NFC terminals, particularly not the roaming ones that come to the table in restaurants, can't really do ApplePay when the vendors need to take your card to the POS...
It still escapes me why Apple didn't aggressively pursue rolling out ApplePay where the required infrastructure is in place, it's years of revenues and sales lost...
Hopefully Switzerland get's ApplePay. I live in Spain now, but I still have some Swiss credit cards. Spain joining in would still be better...
PS: For a start, being able to refuel with a foreign credit card would be nice in the US
One has to wonder wth is going on. Is the executive incompetent? Is someone afraid to depose her due to her gender? Is this another apparent oversight of Eddy Cue? A sign Cue has too much on his plate? These seem like fair questions at this point.
Of course, there are a few holdouts like Tchibo with ancient credit card readers, Osteria pizzeria with NFC function disabled, and so forth.
The cheapest I ever paid with Pay was €0,69 for a 1-litre bottle of Vöslauer water at SPAR self-checkout terminal. SPAR has great promotion video playing on its credit card reader display screen, showing the exciting world of using contactless payment.
What surprised me the most was how many places that have NFC terminal and that accept Visa/MasterCard allowed Pay transaction. That includes the stalwart of cheapiness, ALDI Süd. My favourite part about using Pay was the surprised reaction from the cashiers and people in the queue at the check-out. The beauty of using Pay is I don't have to sign the receipt, including the €289 transaction at Conrad Electronics.
Yeah, I had to reconfigure my iPhone to US region in order to add the American bank card then reverted iPhone back to German.