Apple Pay is continuing its global expansion with an introduction to Norwegian, Polish, and Ukrainian markets later this year. This news was announced by Tim Cook on Tuesday in the company’s quarterly results call, although no specific launch dates were mentioned.
It supports the news from an Alfa-Bank executive last May who said that Apple Pay would be coming to Ukraine sometime in June 2018. A report in December also claimed that Apple was planning a polish launch as soon as March but that was a plan that, clearly, fell through. Allegedly, the company was still negotiating transaction fees with regional banks.
For this quarter’s performance, worldwide Apple Pay transactions tripled year-over-year in the most recent period. This shows just how popular the service has been within its existing markets. Aside from the U.S., other supported countries include Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Japan, Russia, and the UK.
The service debuted in the U.S. back in 2014 but throughout 2015 only three more countries came onboard: Australia, Canada, and the UK. Further expansion came during 2016 and 2017 but the only new country in 2018 has been Brazil.
Apple Pay now encompasses all devices including the iPhone, iPad, Macs, and the Apple Watch.
