American Express (Amex) plans to make Apple Pay services available to card members in Singapore and Hong Kong in 2016.
Amex card members can pay with their iPhone or Apple Watch in stores where contactless payments and American Express are accepted, and within participating merchant apps.
American Express says it will provide the same level of protection and customer service card members expect from the credit card company. Amex card carrying members using Apple Pay will get real-time notifications and details for purchases and will have seamless connection to the Amex Mobile app for enhanced account monitoring, servicing and access to available rewards and offers.
"With our global reach, we are able to bring Apple Pay to Card Members quickly in these important countries. We believe it is critical to be on the forefront of seamless and innovative payment solutions for our Card Members and we are pleased to be able to deliver on that with Apple Pay," said Tony Prentice, vice president, mobile products and payments, American Express.
According to the company once the Amex card number is added to Apple Pay, the actual Card numbers are not stored on the device. Instead, a unique Device Account Number is assigned, encrypted and securely stored in the Secure Element on their device. Each transaction is authorized with a one-time unique dynamic security code.
Apple continues to add to its roster of supporting merchants and financial institutions globally. Expectations are that Apple Pay will become available in China, Hong Kong and Singapore in 2016. Thad Peterson, a senior analyst at Aite Group, was quoted by Bloomberg as saying “There’s a lot of opportunity for Apple because their brand has a significant cache. Apple’s challenge will be “to see if there’s going to be an adoption curve significant enough to justify the investment.”
In 2014, MasterCard signed on to the Apple Pay bandwagon.
The mobile payment market is expected to continue to grow in 2016. According to 2015 World Payments Report by CapGemini and Royal Bank of Scotland, the volume of non-cash transaction is growing faster than GDP around the world and projected to have reached 389.7 billion transactions in 2014 fueled by US economic recovery, adoption of contactless and mobile payments and implementation of immediate payments across markets, and robust non-cash payments growth in emerging Asia.