CUPERTINO, Calif.—Apple last week made the U.K. the first market outside the U.S. to offer its new payments solution. Apple Pay is now available at 250,000 retail locations in Britain.
U.K. Apple users can buy everything from coffee to gas with their devices at companies that include BP, McDonald’s, and department-store chain Marks & Spencer Group, as well as the Transport for London railway and bus network, Bloomberg Business reported.
“The U.K. is an important market for Apple because the level of contactless penetration in cards and accepting terminals far exceeds that of the U.S.,” Eden Zoller, an analyst at Ovum, told Bloomberg.
Apple Pay will have to work harder to stand out in Britain because “displacing contactless cards in favor of NFC mobile payments will be more of a challenge,” Zoller said. Retailers in other highly developed contactless-payments markets, such as Australia, will be watching closely, she added.
In the U.K. Apple Pay will support credit and debit cards from American Express, Visa Europe and MasterCard. U.K. card issuers using the system include National Westminster Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland and Banco Santander SA. Later in July, HSBC Holdings joins, with Halifax and Lloyds Banking Group Plc also scheduled to take part by this fall, Bloomberg reported.