Apple Pay Expands to Taiwan

iPhone 6 or later*

Why would Apple Pay only work with specific banks at FamilyMart? I thought stores couldn't get that level of information from AP transactions.

We still do not have it in a lot of EU countries, and I have been helping quite a few small to large business offline with ideas and whatever. Anyway, I have been asking them in the last 6 months about Apple Pay, and they said they gave up on waiting and went with their bank wireless pay machine. They are modern, easier to use, take multiple type of cards, and wireless pay works. Everybody has a card, and nobody has to pull their phone out. They said it's fine, and waiting for apple until they can renew their approach isn't cost effective. Not sure if Apple will get a lot of adaption in the NL anymore except maybe inner city tourist area.

tmiw said:

Why would Apple Pay only work with specific banks at FamilyMart? I thought stores couldn't get that level of information from AP transactions.

Click to expand...

Like with all contactless payments, when the transaction is processed the accepting merchant bank can decide to accept/reject the transaction based on lots of criteria including the source bank, but this is kind of bank-specific rejection is rarely done for obvious reasons (you want to accept transactions from anyone).

However, afaik FamilyMart is doing this because they have (for a long time) offered co-branded store cards with Taishin International Bank, i.e. they are essentially a "FamilyMart Card", supplied via Taishin International. So that arrangement is part of the reason why it currently works only with Taishin International cards (most prominently FamilyMart co-branded cards). But what isn't mentioned in the MacRumors article is that FamilyMart is going to expand it in July to support other banks including CTBC Bank, Cathay United Bank and E.SUN Bank and I imagine more pretty soon after that.

It's important to know that in Taiwan, contactless stuff is mostly used with "charge cards" (like the Suica cards in Japan), not Visa/MasterCard/American Express, with the common use cases for those charge/store cards being small convenience store purchases and transport, not for general shopping things outside 7-Elevens, FamilyMarts and OK Marts. Outside of major cities it's also rare to find restaurants that would accept any form of credit card, let alone contactless terminals. Chain shopping stores support credit cards but still require a signature in most cases, so Apple Pay is way ahead of the curve for Taiwan, which means they're well placed for when general contactless shopping catches on. It's expected that Android Pay will also be supported in Taiwan in a couple more months (already approved with the regulatory bodies, but hasn't launched).

Edit: Couple of edits to fix typos and clarify some points.

Floris said:

We still do not have it in a lot of EU countries, and I have been helping quite a few small to large business offline with ideas and whatever. Anyway, I have been asking them in the last 6 months about Apple Pay, and they said they gave up on waiting and went with their bank wireless pay machine. They are modern, easier to use, take multiple type of cards, and wireless pay works. Everybody has a card, and nobody has to pull their phone out. They said it's fine, and waiting for apple until they can renew their approach isn't cost effective. Not sure if Apple will get a lot of adaption in the NL anymore except maybe inner city tourist area.

Click to expand...

The delay bringing Apple Pay to Holland is probably to do with the unusual Maestro standard. If you guys used Visa/MC I'm sure you'd have got Apple Pay long ago. That said Android Pay works fine in NL.

Floris said:

We still do not have it in a lot of EU countries, and I have been helping quite a few small to large business offline with ideas and whatever. Anyway, I have been asking them in the last 6 months about Apple Pay, and they said they gave up on waiting and went with their bank wireless pay machine. They are modern, easier to use, take multiple type of cards, and wireless pay works. Everybody has a card, and nobody has to pull their phone out. They said it's fine, and waiting for apple until they can renew their approach isn't cost effective. Not sure if Apple will get a lot of adaption in the NL anymore except maybe inner city tourist area.

Click to expand...

Pay terminals like Square in the US/U.K./Australia? These work just fine with Apple Pay. Any terminal with PayPass/paywave works with Apple Pay.