Apple Pay launches in France
France bites
Apple Pay is now available in France – with Visa debit and credit cardholders from Banque Populaire et Caisse d’Epargne (BPCE group) getting immediate access.
Apple Pay can be used to touch and pay wherever Visa contactless payment is accepted. Visa says France already has over 400,000 merchant locations live with contactless payment today (19 July), with mandates in place for all merchants to accept Visa contactless payment by 2020.
Gérard Nébouy, regional managing director France, Visa, says: “Consumer demand for contactless payments combined with the huge popularity of smartphones incorporating NFC technology has put in place a foundation for a shift from plastic to digital.”
Visa says when credit or debit cards are added to the service, actual payment card details are not stored on the device or on Apple’s servers. Instead, Visa generates a unique payment token (labelled as a Device Account Number in Apple Wallet), which is assigned and stored on the device. It says card information is never shared with merchants.
Core details
There have been other Apple Pay launches this year.
One million Visa cardholders in Switzerland got access to the newly launched Apple Pay; and Wirecard is also providing its clients with Apple Pay support.
Apple Pay support is expanding beyond American Express to Visa and MasterCard credit and debit cards from five of Singapore’s major banks. The big banks include POSB, DBS, OCBC, Standard Chartered and UOB.
Apple launched its mobile payment system in China in partnership with state-owned bankcard association, China UnionPay.
