Apple Pay has been regarded by many to usher in a new era of mobile payments. So far Apple Pay is limited to countries like the US and the UK, but it seems that as far as issuers are concerned, Apple has many partners on board. In fact recently, Apple has added 46 new banks to their list of Apple Pay backers.
What this means is that the total number of participating issuers in the US for Apple Pay has crossed the 500 mark. Some of the notable new additions to the list include Citizen Bank, E-Trade Bank, along with credit unions for MIT, Johns Hopkins, and McGraw-Hill. Like we said, ultimately this brings the total number of issuers to more than 500.
That being said while there are many backing Apple Pay, it seems that as far as consumers are concerned, there doesn’t seem to be much activity going on. For example earlier this year, it was suggested that 85% of iPhone users have yet to try Apple Pay, and that many top retailers are still resisting Apple Pay implementations in their stores.
However with the rise of mobile payments, especially with the launch of Android Pay, perhaps we’ll start seeing more retailers start to include more support for similar payment methods in the future.
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