Apple Pay is slowly making its way to markets around the world, like in Australia where it had initially debuted with support for American Express, which later resulted in ANZ being the first of Australia’s four major banks to officially adopt Apple Pay, and in turn offered support for Visa credit/debit cards.It turns out that it might have been a smart move because according to ANZ’s CEO Shayne Elliott, adopting Apple Pay could have helped contribute a 20% uptick in online credit card and deposit applications. He adds that on the day Apple Pay support was announced, online deposit applications were the highest on record and was more than double the average.
The uptick in applications is said to have caused the other three major banks – Westpac, NAB, and Commonwealth to reconsider their holdout. For those unfamiliar with the situation, Australia’s major banks had initially held out on supporting Apple Pay due to the amount of credit card transaction fees that they would potentially lose out on, which is estimated to be in the billions of dollars.
That being said, the CEOs of Westpac and NAB have stated that negotiations with Apple will continue. According to Westpac’s CEO Brian Hartzer, “It would be nice for us to offer [Apple Pay] in the context of what we are doing but in the end it has to be commercially sustainable. We will continue to talk to [Apple] and other wallet providers and see where we get to.”
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