Apple has announced that Apple Pay would now not only be available in US, it would now also be available in the UK by July. The company is partnering with Eight of the most popular UK Banks on the payment service and more would be added over time.
Over 250,000 locations should accept Apple Pay from the onset and more than 70% of the debit and credit cards issued in the UK would be supported. London Transportation System is one of the confirmed merchants.
The Cupertino giant is also teaming up with retail outlets – Marks and Spencer, Waitrose and Boots. An impending update to iOS 9 will see Apple Pay become a part of Wallet (the new name for Passbook on iOS) which would let users input their Store Debit and Credit cards whilst also adding boarding passes, concert tickets, airline tickets, loyalty cards, reward cards, and more.
Backing up statistics in the US, Apple says over 2500 Banks across America now support Apple Pay and later this year, support for Discover based cards would add around 50 million more cards to the service. In a forward moving momentum, one million locations is expected to support the service by July 2015.
Pinterest would be launching buyable pins later this month and would integrate Apple Pay into their app to make payments. Popular phone based card scanning terminal, Square will add support for Apple Pay and would launch a new reader to work with it later this year.
