Apple Pay coming to the UK in the “first half of 2015”
The major British banks are currently negotiating with Apple on support for the company’s new wireless payment system, called Apple Pay, according to reports.
The Telegraph claims that negotiations are well under way – and it could see the service launch over here in the first half of next year. Apple Pay has been available in the US since November.
Apparently the sticking points in the negotiation at the moment are over exactly how much data the banks will hand over to Apple. Whilst Apple Pay will be exciting for consumers, and is more or less an inevitability given how powerful Apple is, the technology does introduce a new middleman in payments (Apple), which implicitly erodes the power of the banks. (Apple muscling in on payments also affects the power balance with retailers, which is why some shops are unhappy too.)
We’ll let you know when we hear more – but we’re looking forward to waving our phones to pay already.
