Apple Pay is accepted by 700,000 retailer locations in the U.S., and the iPhone-embedded payment service now loads cards from 2,500 card issuing banks, CEO Tim Cook revealed at the kick off of Apple’s Spring Forward Event on Monday.
That’s pretty astonishing growth considering Apple was accepted at 220,000 retailers at its launch in October, meaning retail chains and independent businesses have been either upgrading their checkout gear to accept the near-field communications (NFC) taps used by Apple’s iPhone contactless payment technology or they’ve turned on NFC capabilities in their existing terminals.
At the event, Cook flashed a slide on screen that showed many of the retail chains newly on board with Apple Pay. There were carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile, airlines and hotels JetBlue and Marriott and many, many new stores.
The number of partner banks quintupled from the 500 deals Apple had in place at launch, which is significant because it means consumers don’t have to apply for specific debit or credit cards to use Apple Pay. Consumers can load any card — or at least the vast majority of cards — they already have in their billfolds into the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. Not having the backing of the banks has been a hindrance to other mobile wallets like Google Wallet and Isis/Softcard at launch, but Apple recently claimed that more than 90 percent of all credit and debit transactions could technically be supported on Apple Pay.
Apple is clearly having success embedding its service into retail stores, but it gave an update on its effort to embed itself into vehicles. CarPlay now has the backing of all of the world’s major automakers. Though we have yet to see a CarPlay-enabled vehicle, this likely means that CarPlay will eventually become an option in most newer cars with fancy infotainment systems.
