Apple Pay has come to New Zealand.
The service launched in New Zealand on Wednesday, marking the 11th country where the service has come online.
Apple Pay in New Zealand is available through a partnership with ANZ bank, meaning it can only be used with Visa credit and debit cards issued by ANZ at this time. Some banks in Australia and New Zealand have been reluctant to accept Apple Pay due to the fee Apple collects.
As of today, Apple Pay has officially come to the United Kingdom and are available for use in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
Apple Pay works at participating retail stores and within apps that accept it. Because it requires NFC, it is only available for iPhone 6 and 6 Plus users, and Apple Watch users who have an iPhone 5, 5c, 5s, 6, or 6 Plus. In-app Apple Pay purchases can be made with an iPad Air 2, iPad mini 3, iPhone 6, or iPhone 6 Plus.
With literally a week left in 2014, a change to an Apple web page hinted at organizations that might not be able to incorporate Apple Pay within 2014.
Per MacRumors, Apple today slightly altered its micro site dedicated to Apple Pay to update the status of several of its partnerships. Retailers that teamed up with Apple and plan to implement Apple Pay support in retail stores and apps in the near future are now listed under sections labeled “Coming soon” instead of “Coming later this year.”
The minor change in language suggests that many of Apple’s Apple Pay partners will not be able to implement Apple Pay support in the last week of 2014, instead rolling out support in the first months of 2015. Many retailers that have chosen to implement Apple Pay may still be working to train employees, update hardware, and swap out point-of-sale systems, leading to variable launch dates.
Apple Pay is growing.
Per MacRumors and the New York Times,
With the list of Apple Pay-supported companies growing more every week, Apple has revealed that the new mobile payments service now supports cards representing about 90 percent of the credit card purchase volume in the United States. This is up from the 80 percent figure cited at Apple Pay’s launch just two months ago.