Till date, the Apple payment service is available to citizens of Australia, Canada, UK and US. According to official reports, China will have the services of Apple payment available within quite a short period. A customer service executive from the Guang Fa Bank has confirmed via the bank’s public account in WeChat that the official time from when Apple Payment will be available to the citizens of China will be on 18th February, 2016 from 5.00 AM onwards, according to local time. Some time back, Apple had announced that China will be the next country to see the expansion of Apple Pay, in collaboration with Union Pay, the interbank which has monopoly over the debit and credit card processing in the country.
The cardholders of Union Pay will have the facility to use their Apple devices, be it iPhones, iPads or Apple watches, for accessing Apple Pay, but to use it; they have to have watch OS 2.1 or iOS 9.2 to go ahead with the transactions. Past November, as per the reports of The Wall Street Journal, Apple has confirmed deals with the top four state run banks of China, the Agricultural Bank of China, China Construction Bank Industrial & Commercial Bank of China and the Bank of China, in order to start up the Apple payment service based on the iPhone. According to the report, the final launching of the service coincided with the Chinese New Year Festival, i.e. 13th February, 2016.
Though the date has already passed without any kind of major official opening, videos in YouTube show that since January, Apple Pay has been available to Union Pay card holders for in‐app or in‐store purchases. It can be concluded from this information that Apple is simply checking if the payment facilities are perfectly working by allowing only selected users. On confirmation, they will look to make the big official opening of the payment facility across the country.
