NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Another one of Australia’s big four banks, National Australia Bank, has given in to pressure from customers and has agreed to support Apple Pay.
NAB, which launched Apple Pay service this week, follows Commonwealth Bank of Australia, or CBA, which had dropped its resistance to Apple Pay in January. That leaves only Westpac among the big four banks that is still officially balking at supporting the NFC payments service, although market observers expect this bank to cave in soon, considering that all of its major rivals have adopted the service. ANZ was the first of the country’s big banks to sign on to Apple Pay, in the spring of 2016.
NAB, CBA and Westpac, along with the smaller Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, were originally dead set against supporting Apple Pay in its current form. They had sought permission from regulators in July 2016 to boycott the payments service as they bargained collectively to try to get the tech giant to open its embedded secure chips to their own mobile payments apps. In reality, the banks are believed to have objected most to transaction fees Apple charges that other Pays wallets, such as Google Pay and Samsung Pay do not.
