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Apple Pay will expand to Switzerland on Monday, June 13, marking the seventh country where the mobile payments service is available, according to German-language financial website Finews (via iPhone-Ticker).
Swiss private bank Cornèr Bank will purportedly be one of the first participating issuers in Switzerland, but the report did not specify if the country's two "big banks" UBS and Credit Suisse will also support Apple Pay upon launch.
Apple Pay's arrival in Switzerland has been expected since Apple filed a trademark for the service with the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property in February. The U.K. is currently the only other European country with Apple Pay.
Apple is "working rapidly" to expand the service to additional regions, including Hong Kong and Spain, and possibly France, Brazil, and Japan, in partnership with American Express, MasterCard, Visa, and other payment processors. Apple Pay has also expanded to ANZ in Australia, five large banks in Singapore, and Canada's big five banks BMO, CIBC, RBC, Scotiabank, and TD Canada Trust.
(Thanks, Nicolas!)
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How prevalent is contactless there, out of curiosity?
Basically everywhere!Even the guy who delivers my pizza brings a mobile credit card terminal which supports contactless...
How prevalent is contactless there, out of curiosity?
Where it works:- The two biggest supermarket chains, Coop & Migros and their multitude of goods and restaurant subsidiaries;
- Chevron (branded as Coop Pronto) gas stations (not at the pump though);
- Aldi (discount grocery);
- SPAR (big grocery chain in Austria);
- Jumbo (a big hardware and garden store);
- IKEA and IKEA restaurant;
- McDonalds;
- Kiosk (convenience store oft found at train stations);
- local specialty liquor and gourmet shop;
- local bike and Vespa shop;
- various local larger restaurants;
- my local barber, now semi-retired from a 10-chair hi-volume mall based shop to a little 2-chair shop in his home;
- some car dealers;
- seems almost anybody on the Sixt payment network;
Far as I know, still no-go;
- almost no gas stations (although some have NFC terminals, they don't appear to be active - BP, this is you!)
- Manor / Manora (big dept store and restaurant chain);
- Lidl (discount grocery);
- Otto's (odd lot grocery/dept store);
- busses or rail;
- medium and small individual restaurants;
- Subway (restaurants);
- Post Office
- government entities (DMV);
- phone, cable, electric companies;
- ski lifts (not sure about this due to not skiing last 2 years due to bad knee);
There are some home-grown solutions being pushed by the Post Office Bank and other entities that consist of CurrentC-like scanning of QR codes or contactless scanning of something (Twint), that I see but never looked into because these I see as solutions without a great future (obsolete tech like QR approach, or too little scale like Twint) given the rise of NFC based solutions like Apple Pay.
TL;DR? Summary:
- (My credit cards are US-based chip+sign version. If you have cards from a not-yet rolled-out Apple Pay nation, they won't work);
- (my iTunes account is US-based, but my region setting is for Switzerland. To enable my cards, on both IPhone and Watch, I switched region to USA, enabled cards, then switched back to Swiss region w/o disrupting Apple Pay functionality);
- Since Dec 2014, I've been using Apple Pay almost everywhere I shop;
- since last June, these transactions have been exclusively via my Apple Watch;
- both work faster than a chip+pin or a chip+sign card;
- I see more and more shops upgrading to NFC POS terminals;
- there are competing systems from Post Bank (IIRC Twint), UBS Bank (don't know name), Swisscom (has/had? something) and MC Pay-Pass (IIRC RF-chip stickers). (In order to survive, I expect some of these entities will exhibit their own "protectionist" approach as ApplePay et Alia forces consolidation among these national/regional offerings);
- 2-weeks ago I met one of the leading software integrators for POS software and had a long discussion about this tech. I was surprised when he said he thought Apple's reserving TouchID for Apple Pay was "protectionist" and had the impression he didn't fully understand the Apple Pay approach (I'm curious as to how he will view this announcement);
- Coop did a cool thing for their Supercard members: go to the online site and in your profile state that you don't want printed receipt and you will get a pdf receipt by mail.
Final comments:
- I'm essentially to the point where I don't really have to carry credit/Maestro cards anymore;
- I don't think merchants have yet embraced such payment as equivalent to chip+pin as above ca. 50 CHF I still have to sign the receipt.
- I'm gonna miss the look of surprise and amazement from some cashiers caused by my being the only person in my end of the country paying for stuff with my Apple Watch.
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I'm looking forward to the day when Apple Pay and Touch ID gets integrated into Safari and websites, instead of running through the maze of clunky PayPal login every time. PayPal knows Apple has them in their crosshairs and their days are numbered (except on eBay). That's why PP is scrambling with their new always logged in (security nightmare) "feature".
Also looking forward to PP being slain by Apple Pay. That and Apple Pay adding a P2P payment function.One can dream, right?