Apple Pay launches in Russia
Apple Pay has landed
Apple Pay has launched in Russia with partners Sberbank and MasterCard.
Russia is the tenth country where Apple Pay has been made available, following the US, UK, Canada, France, China and others.
Alexander Torbakhov, deputy chairman of the executive board of Sberbank, says: “Apple Pay is driving the popularisation of contactless payments in Russia and globally.”
Apple Pay uses the MasterCard Digital Enablement Service (MDES) platform, which in turn uses EMV, tokenisation, cryptography and biometrics – to “ensure the integrity of cardholder information”.
Sberbank says when a client adds a MasterCard credit or debit card to Apple Pay, the card number is not stored on the device or Apple’s servers. Instead, a unique ID is assigned to each device, which is encoded and stored on the device’s secure element chip.
Apple Pay can be set up in the Sberbank Online mobile application, so users can get a contactless payment service and receive the “benefits” from using their credit and debit cards.
In stores, Apple Pay works with iPhone SE, iPhone 6 and later, and Apple Watch.
Go to hell
It’s not all sweetness and light for Apple.
The firm responded strongly to three of Australia’s big banks’ plans to team up for negotiation deals on digital wallet access.
Apple told the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) that “allowing the banks to form a cartel to collectively dictate terms to new business models and services would set a troubling precedent and delay the introduction of new, potentially disruptive technologies”.
The saga is ongoing.
