Apple Pay turns 10, Klarna offers payment on account

On October 20th, next Sunday, there will be something to celebrate in Apple’s services department: Apple Pay will then be available for a total of ten years. The contactless payment service was first introduced in the USA in 2014 and then came to Germany four years later. It allows you to store credit cards such as Visa, Mastercard or American Express, which you can then use to pay on your iPhone or Apple Watch at NFC cash registers as well as on the web on iPad and Mac. Initially not available at all banks, those that do not support Apple Pay are now in the minority. However, that could change in the future, because Apple will soon have to open the iPhone payment interface to third parties because the EU Commission is forcing the companies to do so. It could also happen that you will soon be able to pay at Sparkasse & Co. with their apps and no longer with the central Apple wallet app.

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Apple Pay still doesn’t have all the features

In addition, Apple Pay is still not complete in the European Union. Apple has still not exported popular features that have been available in the USA for years – apparently due to a lack of banking partners. These include the savings account Apple Savings Account, the customer-friendly Apple credit card Apple Card and the peer-to-peer payment service Apple Cash. After all, with Tap to Pay in the summer, Apple created the opportunity for smaller companies to accept contactless payments with the iPhone. To do this, however, you have to conclude contracts with payment providers such as Square.

The manager responsible for Apple Pay, Jennifer Bailey, said in a letter to her colleagues and customers that ten years ago they saw a “unique opportunity” to use Apple’s hardware and software to have a “positive impact on financial health “. and impact the lives of our customers. The vision was always a world in which the man with the iPhone could pay for everything – all over the world. Apple Pay is now available in 78 markets and used by hundreds of millions of customers. Apple now has more than 11,000 banking and network partners, according to Bailey. They mentioned using their iPhone in Tokyo’s public transport system as one of their first experiences.

New services from Klarna and PayPal

In keeping with the anniversary, Apple and its partner Klarna announced a new, flexible “pay by invoice” service for Apple Pay. In the future, it will be possible to arrange installment payments directly for online purchases with Apple Pay as well as within apps on iPhone and iPad. In the USA, the PayPal debit card now also shows the current account balance in Apple Wallet.

In the future, Apple also introduced a function with which Apple Pay can be used in third-party browsers outside of Safaris as well as Windows PCs – but this requires an iPhone or iPad with which a code can be scanned. Apple Wallet will also soon make it possible to store keys for rental cars, Bailey told US media.

(BSC)