In terms of availability, Apple Pay is pretty much limited to the US and the UK, but presumably will want to roll out the feature to countries around the world where their products are available in. The good news is that it looks like that rollout has sort of begun. Partnering with American Express, Apple is expected to begin introducing the payment service to countries such as Australia and Canada.
However given that this is a partnership with American Express, it also means that those with American Express credit cards will be able to use the service for now, at least until the folks at Visa and MasterCard and their issuing banks get on board, which apparently has been quite difficult outside of the US and UK market.
The good news is that customers in Australia and Canada won’t have to wait too long to use it. The service is expected to go live by the end of the year, and come 2016 Apple Pay with American Express support will be rolling out to more countries such as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Spain.
It is unclear as to when we can expect wider availability of Apple Pay, but presumably it is in Apple’s best interest to roll it out as quick as possible. There are numerous competing services vying for a slice of the pie, such as Android Pay, Samsung Pay which recently racked up 1 million subscribers in South Korea, and let’s not forget Chase Pay by JPMorgan Chase who recently announced their mobile payment plans.
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