At the moment Apple Pay is limited to just the US, although it is obvious that Apple will eventually expand to other markets, the question is when? According to a report from The Wall Street Journal who quotes people familiar with the matter, it seems that our friends up north in Canada can expect to look forward to the service come this November.
The report claims that Apple is currently in talks with the country’s six biggest banks about a possible launch in November. For the most part the banks are receptive to the idea but there are a few things that concerns them. For starters it would be the agreed upon fee which it seems that they’re not too happy about. They are also worried about potential security issues like the ones US banks experienced when the service was first rolled out.
However to be fair, the service was new at that time and there were bound to be a hiccup here and there, but hopefully Apple has everything under control since then. The Canadian market is a pretty attractive market for Apple because according to the data from research firm Catalyst, it is found that iPhones account for a third of Canada’s smartphone market, compared to the average of about 20% in other countries.
That and the fact that a good majority of Canadian retailers are already equipped with machines that accept contactless pay, similar to Australia which means that Canadian banks will just need to authorize the transactions. There have been similar rumors that Apple Pay could eventually make its way to other countries, such as China and the UK, but so far nothing has really materialized just yet.
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