Apple Pay adoption has been rather slow in Australia due to disagreements between Apple and major banks over access to the NFC chip in iPhones. Today, however, The Commonwealth Bank of Australia – or CommBank – announced that it will finally support Apple Pay.
CommBank made the announcement in a tweet this 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.
CommBank is one of the “big four” banks in Australia. The other three big banks are 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 in Australia have openly battled Apple over access to the iPhone’s NFC hardware. The banks have requested that Apple open access to the NFC hardware so they can run their own competing payment platforms, but Apple has denied those requests.
For the full list of banks around the world that support Apple Pay, visit Apple’s support page here.
Apple Pay is coming for CommBank personal customers January 2019 🙌🎉 pic.twitter.com/VHeZWKBoRp
— CommBank (@CommBank) December 14, 2018
