If you’re traveling to Australia in January, you might like this.
While Apple Pay adoption has been somewhat slow in Australia thanks to disagreements between Apple and major banks over access to the NFC chip in iPhones, a large obstacle was surmounted on Thursday. After much negotiation, Commonwealth Bank of Australia – or CommBank – announced that it will finally support Apple Pay.
CommBank announced the partnership via a tweet on Thursday evening, saying that Apple Pay will launch for its personal customers in January of 2019. Other details are unclear at this point, but this announcement has been a long time coming for CommBank customers.
ComBank stands as one of the “big four” banks in Australia alongside National Australia Bank (NAB), Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ), and Westpac (WBC). Currently in Australia, ANZ supports Apple Pay, while Westpac and NAB remain holdouts. This makes CommBank the second of the “big four” banks in Australia to support Apple’s mobile payment platform.
The larger banks’ squabble with Apple has centered on the iPhone’s NFC hardware. The banks, in turn, have requested that Apple open access to the NFC hardware so they can run their own competing payment platforms. Apple has denied those requests.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.