Apple have confirmed that Apple Pay will be coming to the UK in July but not everyone will get access. Some banks won’t sign up and be ready until Autumn and notably Barclays have yet to announce any support at all.
Barclays probably aren’t too keen on Apple Pay as they’ve invested heavily in Ping It, their consumer to consumer and small business money transfer app. In reality there’s not much doubt that Barclays will be forced to join Apple Pay at some point. Here’s the list of banking partners Apple have announced:
| Financial institutions which will support Apple Pay | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Card Issuers |
Bank support at launch |
Bank support by Autumn |
Banks with no support to date |
| American Express MasterCard Visa Europe |
HSBC NatWest Nationwide Building Society Royal Bank of Scotland Santander Ulster Bank |
Bank of Scotland Coutts Halifax Lloyds Bank MBNA M&S Bank TSB Bank |
Barclays |
Retailers
So know you know if your bank supports Apple Pay, where will you be able to use it? Obviously all 39 UK Apple Stores, but also retailer including Boots, BP, Costa Coffee, Dune, JD Sports, KFC, Liberty, LIDL, M&S, McDonald’s UK, Nando’s, New Look, Post Office, Pret A Manger, SPAR, Starbucks, SUBWAY stores, Wagamama and Waitrose.
It’s rather interesting that the upper class Waitrose and bargain basement LIDL are two supermarkets at opposite ends of the scale. Where are Tesco, Sainsbury’s Asda etc?
However as we said yesterday the real killer advantage for Apple Pay will without doubt be transport with the Underground and TfL being a launch partner. The 10m Londeners and commuters will doubtless soon find it’s easier to get their iPhone out than dig in their wallet for their NFC enabled debit card.
Apps
Apple Pay won’t be limited to retailers, there are a ton of apps which will also support the new Apple Pay payments in the UK to include: Addison Lee, Airbnb, Argos, Booking.com, British Airways, Domino’s, easyJet, Hailo, HotelTonight, hungryhouse, JD Sports, Just Eat, lastminute.com, Miss Selfridge, Ocado, Stubhub, thetrainline.com, Top 10, Topshop, Uncover, Vueling, YPlan, Zalando and Zara.
Notably missing are the two most popular apps in the country – eBay and Amazon. There’ll be no move from eBay until well after the split from PayPal, but potentially it has to be something that eBay consider. That is of course if PayPal doesn’t support Apple Pay in which case we might yet see it on eBay too.
Amazon are probably reluctant to support Apple Pay and give away control of their data and their payments. If you’re on the Amazon App you’ve already got Amazon payments set up and one click ordering. Why complicate things by offering a payment choice?
Updated to add: PayPal to support Apple Pay from day 1 in the UK
“PayPal’s Braintree is a preferred payments partner for Apple Pay and we welcome its entry into the UK. Through the Braintree v.zero SDK, our merchants will be enabled to accept Apple Pay. At PayPal we’ve been building for a mobile commerce future for years and our approach to mobile and digital payments has always been one of collaboration. We have more than 165 million active digital wallets and processed almost 1 billion mobile transactions last year alone”. – Cameron McLean, Managing Director, PayPal UK
