Apple Pay Launching in Canada With American Express on November 17
Apple Pay is expected to expand to its third market this week, launching in Canada this Tuesday, November, 17, reports iPhone in Canada. As previously announced, Apple Pay will be launching through an exclusive partnership with American Express, initially limiting the reach of Apple's payments service in the country.
According to American Express, the service is set to launch this Tuesday, November 17, 2015. Customer service representatives we spoke with confirmed the date over the phone numerous times, and is in line with what you’ve told us as well.
As reported by The Globe and Mail last month, sources indicate Apple partnered with American Express in order to expedite the Apple Pay launch in the country, as discussions with the major Canadian banks and other credit card companies had been "dragging."
Beyond Canada, Apple is also partnering with American Express to bring Apple Pay to Australia by the end of the year and to Spain, Singapore, and Hong Kong next year. Apple Pay launched in the United States alongside iOS 8 in September 2014 and expanded to the United Kingdom in July of this year.
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Top Rated Comments
I prefer leaving my wallet in my pants pocket, and either (a) use my watch - it's right there on my wrist all the time, or (b) use my iPhone which is always handy in my shirt pocket.
Having used ApplePay since day one in the US and Canada, I can state that I have never had a "fingerprint misread". None. It's a non-issue.
Pre-ApplePay I had a number of tap cards. Now I only have one, infrequently used, non-ApplePay NFC card left.
I know it is not often mentioned but one additional advantage of American Express when merged with Apple Pay and the Amex App is that your iPhone can be notified (push) for each and every charge made regardless of how the charge was made. Recurring payments, online charges, ApplePay charges, literally any charges. It is the best fraud protection bar none.
When you use Apple Pay, the merchant's terminal only receives the DAN. It submits that, along with some other encrypted fields. Your bank must then map the DAN to your account, validate the other fields, and then decide whether to authorize the transaction. This is why NFC doesn't "just work": your iPhone doesn't have your true account number, and the bank must build a new back-end systems to do the mapping. Also, Apple is not involved in the transaction at all -- only the initial step to add the card to your Wallet.
Among the other fields in your transaction is a sequence number that is unique to the transaction. There's also a merchant ID, and a cryptographic signature. So, even if someone were to capture your DAN, they can't use it to commit fraud. They can't even "replay" the transaction a second time to double-bill you. This is the additional security that Apple Pay provides for the bank.
Your iPhone looks like a contactless card to the merchant terminal, so there should be no changes required at the merchant if they already support NFC. However, there have been some issues with some transaction processors corrupting the data in transit, requiring updated software and hardware. But others have had no problem.
In the US, banks have been willing to pay a small amount in exchange for this additional security. One benefit is they don't have to reissue a card if the DAN is compromised: you just delete the card from your Wallet and add it again, and you'll have a new DAN. Historically, this has been a large expense over the past few years when the systems of high-profile retailers have been compromised. And of course, you have to authenticate a transaction on the iPhone each time. Also, you can remotely delete the contents of your Wallet.
Apple's fee? In the US, it is reportedly 15 cents per $100. The bank's portion of the transaction fee is about $1.50 per $100, so it's a relatively small amount in exchange for eliminating an entire class of credit card fraud. A few banks have botched the implementation by not sufficiently validating the addition of a card to the Wallet, but I expect that will eventually be resolved.
Welcome to :apple: Pay, Canada!