Apple Pay adoption received a big boost in France today as two major banks officially announced their support for Apple's mobile payment system.
HSBC officially launched a dedicated support page for Apple Pay, confirming an earlier discovery by French tech news site iphon.fr.
Meanwhile, BNP Paribas made good on an announcement last month to bring Apple Pay support to its customers by announcing the compatibility of its Visa bank card with Apple's digital wallet on compatible Apple devices.
BNP Paribas and HSBC join 25 other banks that support Apple Pay in the country, although Apple has yet to update its European Apple Pay bank partners page to reflect the change.
Apple Pay first launched in the United States in October 2014 and has since expanded to many other countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, China, Singapore, Switzerland, Belgium, France, Japan, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Kazakhstan, Russia, New Zealand, Brazil, Poland, Ireland, and Ukraine.
Thursday December 11, 2025 8:49 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple seeded the second iOS 26.2 Release Candidate to developers earlier this week, meaning the update will be released to the general public very soon.
Apple confirmed iOS 26.2 would be released in December, but it did not provide a specific date. We expect the update to be released by early next week.
iOS 26.2 includes a handful of new features and changes on the iPhone, such as a new...
Wednesday December 10, 2025 2:52 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Google Maps on iOS quietly gained a new feature recently that automatically recognizes where you've parked your vehicle and saves the location for you.
Announced on LinkedIn by Rio Akasaka, Google Maps' senior product manager, the new feature auto-detects your parked location even if you don't use the parking pin function, saves it for up to 48 hours, and then automatically removes it once...
Thursday December 11, 2025 11:28 am PST by Juli Clover
Apple today released new firmware designed for the AirPods Pro 3 and the prior-generation AirPods Pro 2. The AirPods Pro 3 firmware is 8B30, up from 8B25, while the AirPods Pro 2 firmware is 8B28, up from 8B21.
There's no word on what's include in the updated firmware, but the AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods Pro 3 are getting expanded support for Live Translation in the European Union in iOS...
Friday December 12, 2025 10:56 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Macworld's Filipe Espósito today revealed a handful of features that Apple is allegedly planning for iOS 26.4, iOS 27, and even iOS 28.
The report said the features are referenced within the code for a leaked internal build of iOS 26 that is not meant to be seen by the public. However, it appears that Espósito and/or his sources managed to gain access to it, providing us with a sneak peek...
Apple has ordered 22 million OLED panels from Samsung Display for the first foldable iPhone, signaling a significantly larger production target than the display industry had previously anticipated, ET News reports.
In the now-seemingly deleted report, ET News claimed that Samsung plans to mass-produce 11 million inward-folding OLED displays for Apple next year, as well as 11 million...
Thursday December 11, 2025 10:31 am PST by Juli Clover
The AirTag 2 will include a handful of new features that will improve tracking capabilities, according to a new report from Macworld. The site says that it was able to access an internal build of iOS 26, which includes references to multiple unreleased products.
Here's what's supposedly coming:
An improved pairing process, though no details were provided. AirTag pairing is already...
Friday December 12, 2025 10:10 am PST by Juli Clover
Apple today released iOS 26.2, the second major update to the iOS 26 operating system that came out in September, iOS 26.2 comes a little over a month after iOS 26.1 launched. iOS 26.2 is compatible with the iPhone 11 series and later, as well as the second-generation iPhone SE.
The new software can be downloaded on eligible iPhones over-the-air by going to Settings >...
Friday December 5, 2025 9:40 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple is about to release iOS 26.2, the second major point update for iPhones since iOS 26 was rolled out in September, and there are at least 15 notable changes and improvements worth checking out. We've rounded them up below.
Apple is expected to roll out iOS 26.2 to compatible devices sometime between December 8 and December 16. When the update drops, you can check Apple's servers for the ...
Thursday December 11, 2025 4:02 pm PST by Juli Clover
Apple is working on a smart home hub that will rely heavily on the more capable version of Siri that's coming next year. We've heard quite a bit about the hub over the last two years, but a recent iOS 26 code leak provides additional insight into what we can expect and confirms rumored features.
Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos.
Macworld claims to have access to an ...
Yet the Netherlands remains practically the last apple-pay-free country in Europe :( also no HomePod, no cellular Apple Watch etc.
Doubly irritating because android users can all use nfc contactless and apple even won’t open up the nfc chip to compensate so we remain the only ones who have to wave actual cards about to pay for stuff (people here use contactless for over 50% of transactions i believe).
Actually, according to the Dutch banks, it’s Apple not actually offering the service to them. Apple don’t respond to any attempts at communication about the subject.
It's up to the banks, and in the US, merchants, as to whether Apple Pay is accepted. Apple translated the Apple Pay support documents into Dutch two years ago when they began discussions with the banks there, but the banks have to sign up and agree to pay Apple a tiny amount (usually around .015%) and have their cards work with the system, e.g., this article is about some additional banks in France agreeing to participate in Apple Pay. Banks in many countries that have controlled the credit card system are sometimes reluctant to give up any portion of the fees they charge or control over the transactions.
