Apple Pay Gains Nearly 60 New U.S. Banks and Credit Unions

Tuesday January 5, 2016 5:53 am PST by Joe Rossignol

Apple-Pay Apple has updated its Apple Pay participating issuers list with 58 additional banks, credit unions and financial institutions supporting the contactless payment service in the United States. Apple Pay now has over 900 participating issuers nationwide, and several more plan to support the NFC-based mobile payment service in the future.

The newly added Apple Pay participating issuers are reflected below, although it's worth noting that some banks, credit unions and financial institutions listed may have already had support for the contactless payments service and are only now being reflected on Apple's website.

The full list of new Apple Pay participating issuers:

Air Academy Federal Credit Union
Ballston Spa National Bank
Bank of Commerce
BankFive
BNA Bank
Capital Area Federal Credit Union
Citizens National Bank
Comenity Bank
CommonWealth One Federal Credit Union
Community Business Bank
Community State Bank
CoreFirst Bank & Trust
Damascus Community Bank
Denison Bank
Diablo Valley Federal Credit Union
Electrical Federal Credit Union
Financial Center First Credit Union
First State Bank of Arcadia
Florence Savings Bank
"FNB Bank, N.A."
Fox Communities Credit Union
Franklin Synergy Bank
Fulton Bank of New Jersey
"Fulton Bank, N.A."
Hercules Credit Union
HFS Federal Credit Union
Iberville Bank
Inspirus Credit Union
Isabella Community Credit Union
Lafayette Ambassador Bank
Landmark Bank
Latino Community Credit Union
Linn Area Credit Union
Machias Savings Bank
Maps Credit Union
McCoy Federal Credit Union
Mercantile Bank
Nicolet National Bank
Ontario-Montclair School Employees Federal Credit Union
Pacific Marine Credit Union
Palmetto Citizens Federal Credit Union
Pen Air Federal Credit Union
Platinum Bank
Red Rocks Credit Union
Rockland Trust
Saginaw Medical Federal Credit Union
Simmons Bank
StonehamBank
Swineford National Bank
Texas Bank and Trust
The Columbia Bank
The Evangeline Bank & Trust Co
The First National Bank of Mount Dora
The National Bank of Indianapolis
Valliance Bank
Wauchula State Bank
West Central Bank
Westmark Credit Union

Apple is committed to an international expansion of Apple Pay, having launched the mobile payments service in Australia and Canada in November in partnership with American Express. Apple Pay is also coming to Hong Kong, Singapore and Spain this year, and the service is rumored to launch in China by February.

Apple Pay gained support for BJ's Wholesale Club private label credit cards and 66 new U.S. issuers on December 15. On the merchant side, Cinnabon, Chili's, Domino's, KFC and Starbucks will support Apple Pay in the U.S. starting this year.

Related Roundup: Apple Pay

Top Rated Comments

levitynyc

141 months ago

Jesus, who cares about these issuers? Just use a credit card anyway.

How about getting more merchants to accept Apple Pay and to have Apple staff going around training clerks and store managers how to use the terminals?

How about making sure these terminals actually function?

Using Apple Pay should be easy. Now its 50/50 that it will go off without a hitch even at locations that accept Apple Pay.

How about universal acceptance at a store?

For example, Best Buy accepts Apple Pay....but not ALL Best Buys accept Apple Pay. Same with Target. That's ridiculous and should be corrected before nonsense like "Bill's Bank of East Hanover NJ is now an Apple Pay issuer."

Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)

macnewbie91

141 months ago

Umm... Apple Pay is up and running... Apple can't control retailers and force them to implement NFC terminals and train their employees. That's not how real life works. I've never once had any issues with apple pay, granted I've probably only used it close to a dozen times, because of how rarely I visit Apple Pay enabled stores. I agree Apple should try to coerce merchants as best they can, but they don't have a lot of leverage (I'm guessing they are already trying as best they can). Incentives would be fine and dandy, but until merchants switch over NFC as a whole will never take off.

If they were doing as much as they can, merchants would love switching over to NFC.

Offer merchants 10 cents per $100 for Apple Pay transactions, I'm sure the retailers would be all over Apple Pay then. A retailer that conducts $30,000 per day in Apple Pay transactions would pad their profits by $30. Retailers are so cheap these days, that they won't balk at a $30 profit per day, per store.

The Australian and Canadian banks would also be on board.

2015 was supposed to be, "the year of Apple Pay." Turns out it wasn't.

Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)

rdlink

141 months ago

Jesus, who cares about these issuers? Just use a credit card anyway.

How about getting more merchants to accept Apple Pay and to have Apple staff going around training clerks and store managers how to use the terminals?

How about making sure these terminals actually function?

Using Apple Pay should be easy. Now its 50/50 that it will go off without a hitch even at locations that accept Apple Pay.

How about universal acceptance at a store?

For example, Best Buy accepts Apple Pay....but not ALL Best Buys accept Apple Pay. Same with Target. That's ridiculous and should be corrected before nonsense like "Bill's Bank of East Hanover NJ is now an Apple Pay issuer."

Well, while I do think that more banks/card issuers is a better thing, you're definitely right about making the merchant experience more consistent and better. I gave merchants a year+ to get their acts together on Apple Pay (contactless payments, period). Time's up. I had my debit card number stolen three days before Christmas.

I am now vocal when I go into a store that doesn't offer it, or has the terminals but does not have them activated. I have begun letting merchants know that if they don't make Apple Pay available to me they will lose my business. Period. I am tired of their lax security practices putting my financial health and privacy in jeopardy. I wrote Petsmart an email recently to tell them that the fact that they have had NFC readers in their stores for over a year, and still don't have them operation has caused me to start using Petco.

I also let merchants know that they are wasting my time making me sign a credit card slip when I use Apple Pay in their store.

I know that some on these forums will state that it's silly to get up in arms about this, but I don't agree. This is not just a cool tech geeky/convenience issue. It's a security issue, and I take that seriously. Also, not telling a merchant you're not happy with them is the same as telling them everything is okay like it is.

Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)

macnewbie91

141 months ago

The company that runs the cafeteria where I work just bought new cash registers and installed them right before the new year. What does it have? A screen with a magnetic strip reader built into it. No chip card slot, no NFC. What a joke. I know the process will take some time, but honestly at this point, the U.S won't ever reach 50% of the total market share in NFC and chip payment systems. Why do you buy a brand new register after the liability shift that only takes magnetic strip cards?

---------------------

My second rant on this Apple Pay subject-- where are the new merchants?

One would think you'd see, "Apple adds 20 new banks and 10 new merchants to partner with Apple Pay."

Nah, we haven't had any new merchants since August sign up for Apple Pay (Rite Aid, and technically they aren't even a partner).

The list should look more like this every month or so:

New Stores
Target
Burger King
CVS
Byrne Dairy
Price Chopper
Tops Markets
(Small Business A)
(Small Business B)
(Small Business C)

Seriously... I'm going to be dead before the U.S fully adopts chip and contactless NFC payments, and only 24 years old.

Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Zimmie

141 months ago

Completely agree, though you'd think with Apple's vast resources they'd be able to do both.

With all this work to get banks signed on, not to mention the difficulty of getting banks to sign on overseas, I now wonder if Apple may have been better off setting up their own bank or buying one, and operating it as a separate subsidiary, like its own Amex division.

They could have reduced the fees to retailers which would have sped up adoption, but taken a big enough cut to make a difference to their bottom line. With incentives like rewards towards the purchase of Apple products, it would also have made the platform stickier and increased sales of their core products.

I think everyone here is severely underestimating how horrible the credit card industry is. I work for a credit card processor. Everything is held together with baling wire and a prayer.

To give you an idea, here are the hands a transaction passes through with a normal processor. First, you swipe the card in a terminal. Chips and NFC tokens are effectively the same as a swipe for this purpose. The terminal at the store takes it and hands it to the terminal vendor. The terminal vendor takes it and hands it to the store's selected processor. The processor hands it to the card brand (Visa, Mastercard, AmEx, &c.). The card brand hands it to the issuer. The issuer hands it to the backing bank. All of these parties get your card data, and they can all be different people. It's an enormous string of middlemen.

None of the banks handle settlement in the same way. Each issuer talks to their set of backing banks and presents one unified interface to the card brands, but each issuer's interface is different. The card brands all talk to their issuers using whatever the issuer wants, then they each present a completely different protocol to the processors. The processors talk to all of the card brands, but they all have a different interface for the terminal vendors. There are huge numbers of deals and contracts involved. The EMV rollout in the United States is going far, far faster than I expected.

As an aside, the security issues in EMV are nightmarish. The chips can be cloned. Chips on stolen cards can be locked open in a way that causes most terminals not to check if the card has been stolen. After working for a credit card company and seeing how little people actually care about keeping cardholder data private, I've switched to using cash for everything I can.

Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)

rdinterman

141 months ago

I am still amazed people like Wal-Mart and Target want their own clunky payment system. I know they want the customer data...but using Apple Pay (mostly at Fresh Market, Whole Foods, and Panera right now) is so incredibly fast and MUCH faster than "chip & sign". You would think other retailers would want faster throughput for customer satisfaction.

Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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