Following a second round of banks adding support for the Apple Pay mobile payments service last week, Regions Bank today began allowing its cards to be added to the service. The bank has reportedly emailed customers about the new support and MacRumors readers have been successfully adding their cards to Apple Pay.
Apple has also updated its list of participating issuers to include Regions, noting that personal credit and debit cards as well as small business credit cards and prepaid cards from the bank are supported at this time.
Regions Banks is based in Birmingham, Alabama and primarily serves the Southeast, Midwest, and Texas with over 1700 branches and 2400 ATMs.
While the number of supporting banks currently numbers a little over a dozen, Apple announced at its media event last month that it has over 500 banks signed on for Apple Pay. Many of the largest banks in the United States are already supporting the service, and the remainder of those signed on will continue rolling out support over time.
Top Rated Comments
I never thought Apple Pay was designed so that you could leave your entire wallet at home.
You still need to carry your driver's licence, insurance cards, etc.
1. Enter the card into Passbook. No problem.
2. Passbook says that you have to call an 800 number to verify the card with Regions.
3. The 800 number doesn't have an option to verify for Apple Pay
4. Call 1-800-Regions. No relevant option and can't get to a real person
5. Call local branch. They have no idea what Apple Pay is and give you a different 800 number
6. Currently on hold while the first representative transfers me to a different representative.
7. Waiting...
It would be nice if Bank's like Regions let ALL of their representatives know what Apple Pay is and how it works before they make the announcement to the public.
Update: The first representative came back after 10 minutes and said there is an extended hold time for the second representative.
Status: Card not verified after 25 minutes of attempting.
As far as your points being addressed...As far as everything I've seen with consumers, banks and credit card companies alike, have had nothing but intense interest in Apple Pay. All three of my banks have already advertised Apple Pay, even at the very early stages.
While you bring up small banks and financial institutions might not be onboard with it. I've heard nothing about this and would be interested in it myself if it has any legitimacy. But other then mentioning Apple PR, I'm not sure how you came up with that conclusion like that other then the smaller banks not adopting it yet.
Here's Visa's (http://usa.visa.com/clients-partners/technology-and-innovation/apple-pay/financial-institutions/index.jsp). Click on the drop down box and select "Coming Soon". There's several hundreds of banks listed.
I can't find the MasterCard one at the moment... but there is a list similar to the Visa list.