Apple rolled out its payment platform yesterday for those fortunate enough to both live in the US and rock an iDevice. Sadly for those of us outside of the United States of America, we’re left out in the cold when it comes to paying for stuff with our Apple gadgets. Unless, you have yourself a US-based credit card. If that’s the case, Apple Pay will probably work for you in Australia with more than a bit of fiddling.
The always enterprising Beau Giles did some tinkering yesterday and figured out how to get Apple Pay working in Australia.
Aussies in iOS 8.1 don’t even get to see the Settings page that allows us to set up an Apple Pay card in Passbook. To enable that, you’ll need to change your region to the US to force it to appear.
From there, you’ll need a credit card from Mastercard, Visa or American Express that was issued in the US to get going. That’s a pretty big sticking point, to be honest.
Unless you already have one it’s bonkers to think that you might go and apply for one just to get early access to Apple Pay. The only thing I can think of that lowers the barrier of entry is grabbing a pre-paid debit card the next time you’re in the US and trying to set up Apple Pay on one of those, but whether that will work remains to be seen.
If you do get it working, however, you’ll be able to pay for stuff using Apple Pay in Australia at anywhere that accepts contactless card payments.
As expected, the only thing a payment terminal needs to work with Apple Pay is a functional contactless terminals, and Australia is sweet for those. We’re one of the world’s leading markets when it comes to contactless-enabled terminals behind Japan and South Korea, so at least there you’re in luck. [Beau Giles]