Apple’s entry into the contactless payment service is off to a great start. The company has been very aggressive in tying up with all major banks in the U.S. and the response so far has proved to be very positive. The New York Times reported that Whole Foods recorded more than 150,000 Apple Pay transactions in the first few days after launch. Apple Pay was launched alongside the introduction of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 plus and it uses NFC chip to make the contactless payment work.
The service has been launched exclusively in the U.S. however, this may change soon, according to a new report Apple may be looking at Canada to expand its service.
Apple and Canadian launch partners are in the process of planning advertising and other promotional material for March, which indicates that the launch could come as soon as then. Of course, these are still active discussions and it’s possible the talks could fail to result in a launch by March. Several sources, however, tell us Apple is currently targeting that timeframe.
Even though the report mentions talks with Canada launch partners it is quite obvious that Apple would be in talks with partners in other countries as well. Apple Pay is designed to be secure as it does not store card number in the cloud, instead it assigns a dynamic token for every transaction. With NFC chip, secure conclave and Touch ID Apple has made its service the most secure form of making financial transactions.
Apple is expected to announce the launch date for Apple Watch in early 2015. With the new Apple Watch and iPhone 6 (or 6 plus) users will be able to authenticate payments with just their watch. It is unclear if Canada will be in the first wave of countries where the Apple Watch launches however, it is possible that Apple Watch and Apple Pay lunch is being planned together.
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