Barclays, a large British multinational banking and financial services company headquartered in London, has confirmed that it will be rolling out support for Apple Pay sometime in late March.
In an email dated January 12 and sent to customer Oli Foster-Burnell, a copy of which was shared on Twitter and obtained by Engadget, Barclays CEO of Personal and Corporate Banking Ashok Vaswani said they will launch Apple Pay “within the next 60 to 75 days”.
As part of its Fare Free Mondays promotion, global financial services corporation MasterCard is now offering Apple Pay users free public transit in London for a limited time. The promo starts today, November 23, and is valid over the next four consecutive Mondays ending December 14, 2015.
During those Mondays, customers in London can take advantage of Apple Pay on their iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and Apple Watch to use London's public transit network at no charge. That is, up to £27.90 in daily fares per customer is included in the form of refundable funds.
In addition to adding Canada as the third country where Apple Pay is available (limited to American Express cardholders at launch), availability of Apple's mobile payments service in the United Kingdom, where Apple Pay launched this summer, increased today with financial institutions TSB and Tesco Bank now supporting the service. This leaves Barclays as the last UK major bank without support for Apple Pay.
Here we go again...
In what could only be described as a continuation of its miserable anti-Apple advertising campaign, Samsung has hired people to wear backpack-mounted banners advertising its Galaxy smartphones to folks who queued up for iPhone 6s launch this morning outside the Apple Store in London’s Regent Street, The Inquirer reported.
The banners promote Samsung’s latest Galaxy S6 edge and S6 edge+ flagships and carry the provocative tagline “The itch to switch just got bigger.” In addition, International Business Times is reporting that Samsung even gave queued customers bright blue pillows and bottles emblazoned with the hashtag #NextIsNew.
But wait, there's more.
The Apple Watch world tour continues unabated with confirmation that the wearable device is slated to go on sale this week at John Lewis, the department store in the United Kingdom, Wearable reports.
Currys, another mainstream UK-based department store, also announced on its website that it would be selling the Apple Watch “soon.”
Both John Lewis and Currys will provide online support for Apple Watch sales as well.
When Apple Pay launched in the United Kingdom in mid-July, it was limited to transactions up to £20 without entering in a PIN number or signature, a cap imposed on almost all contactless payments in the country. Tuesday, the cap rose to £30 per touchless payment without entering a PIN number or providing your signature.
As noted by The Verge, the new £30 cap is applied to all contactless payments in the United Kingdom, including those made via contactless cards that work without any other authentication.
Apple Watch advertising has been amped up quite a bit with news of a remarkable eye-candy floral display which promotes the wearable device at Selfridges, a chain of high end department stores in the UK founded by Harry Gordon Selfridge.
According to design outlet Wallpaper, two dozen floral displays that wrap around Selfridges’ flagship store in London sport blooming flowers and other floral motifs directly inspired by the Motion face on the Apple Watch.
Two weeks after Apple Pay launched in the United Kingdom, HSBC and First Direct customers can now use the service. Both banks were originally supposed to support Apple Pay at launch, and were even mentioned in Apple's support document listing participating banks, but were delayed due to “some issues” until late July.
Apple Pay in the UK imposes a £20 transaction limit as a security measure due to outdated POS terminals. Apple said the £20 limit will increase to £30 in September. The cap will go away once retailers roll out more modern contactless payment terminals.
With such a high-profile launch of a new-category (fashionable) gadget on its hands, little wonder Apple is admittedly enlisting help of the world's top fashion editors, celebrities and athletes in an unprecedented attempt to position the gizmo in the public's consciousness.
The latest in celebrity Watch signings came via British professional rugby player and captain turned cyclist, Will Carling.
Earlier today, Carling on Twitter showed off his stainless steel Apple Watch sporting what appears to be a bespoke red Sport band.
Things could get ugly for Google as the Internet giant lost a UK appeal in the Safari cookie tracking case, potentially opening the door to litigation from the millions of British users, BBC News reported Friday.
The case revolves around Google's practice to continue tracking users of Apple's Safari browser via cookies even after they had changed their browser settings to block cookies, in order to target them with advertising.
As reported by AppleInsider, Apple has raised minimum prices of iPhone and iPad applications in the App Store in Canada, the United Kingdom, Norway and in the European Union.
As a result of the changes, customers in Canada will now see a minimum app price raised from $0.99 (USD$0.83) to $1.19 (USD$1.01). In the United Kingdom, the new minimum tier has gone up from £0.69 ($1.04) to £0.79 ($1.19) and €0.99 ($1.17) in the European Union, up from €0.89 ($1.05) before.
In addition, smartphones, tablets and other gadgets Apple sells in Brazil saw their prices skyrocketing by an average of 10 percent due to the steady devaluation of the country's currency, real.
For the first time since its inception, the Online Apple Store is now accepting PayPal as a payment method in both the United States and United Kingdom, Re/code said Friday.
The change is newsworthy in light of PayPal's reluctance to join Apple's mobile payment solution, Apple Pay, and refusal to update its app with Touch ID authentication.