Starting Tuesday, the Royal Bank of Canada and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, two of Canada’s biggest banks, will allow their customers to use Cupertino’s mobile payments app, reports the Financial Post.
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Until today, Canadians who wanted to use Apple Pay had only one option: a non-bank-issued American Express card. With the addition of Apple Pay, Scotiabank will now offer customers a mobile wallet service on nearly any device.
It was introduced in Canada last November but without support from the big banks, so it was only previously available to Canadians with American Express cards. Canadian Tire Financial will only support credit.
Apple Pay (NASDAQ:AAPL), the mobile wallet that lets customers pay by credit or debit from their phone, has the ability to disrupt the current brick-and-mortar banking system, and it seems like Canada’s big banks are playing along.
Mastercard’s Digital Enablement Service, which supports tokenization among other security measures, will support Apple Pay in Canada.
For the Canadian banks, Apple Pay is a mixed blessing.
Apple Pay is easy to use, easy to set up and is created to protect our customers’ personal information.
This expansion into Canada is particularly notable, since Canadian banks were initially hesitant to embrace Apple’s mobile payments platform.
Apple Pay lets people record their debit/credit card details on their iPhones or Apple watches and acts as a digital wallet while making in-store purchases.
“We designed Apple Pay from the beginning so that the information about your transaction really is between you, your merchant and your issuer”, said Bailey.
“We’re going to continue to listen to our clients and do what they want to do”, she said.
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As an indicator though, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that ANZ’s Apple Pay microsite received 61,000 unique visitors across four days whilst traffic to the ANZ homepage was up by 6 percent since the Apple Pay announcement. Then, you’ll be asked to verify the app either through an email sent to you from your bank or through your bank’s mobile app.
