Apple Pay’s World Tour Continues, Arriving in France, Hong Kong

It’s easy to forget, sometimes, that Apple Pay is closing in on its second anniversary as a product, period. Three years ago, there was no Apple Pay.

Now, Apple Pay’s rise to the forefront of the mobile payments world continues in earnest as it arrives in France and Hong Kong.

Apple Pay went live in France on Tuesday, making it the third European country after the United Kingdom and Switzerland to offer Apple Pay service to users.

It not only offers support for Visa and MasterCard cards, but also a slate of debit cards from several organizations including Banque Populaire and Carrefour Banque.

Mobile services Boon and Orange will be picking it up as well. Some reports note that there was a bit of a snag in the negotiations between Apple and the various banks involved, as they wanted the same deal offered to the Chinese market, where Apple gets .07 percent, or about half its usual percentage. There’s no word on if they got that concession or not.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong rolled out a day later, working with “eligible cardholders” in American Express, MasterCard and Visa.

It’s the third major market in the Asia-Pacific region, with nearly 10,000 merchant locations in the Hong Kong area that will accept Apple Pay.

Several area banks are tied in with the service, including Bank of East Asia, Hang Seng Bank, Standard Chartered and several others.

The addition of Hong Kong and France means these two join Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Switzerland and the United States as offering access to Apple Pay, a development whose impact, even now, is unclear.

With mobile payments in general on the rise—HSBC’s head of retail banking and wealth management in Hong Kong Greg Hingston points out that mobile banking customer numbers are up nearly 50 percent over the preceding three years—having a stake in the market is a smart idea as customers seem eager to put this technology to work.

Future rollouts are likely to follow, and before long, we may well see this technology in action worldwide.

That should make things a lot more convenient for users, though Apple Pay will have to watch out for the growing body of competitors eager for a chance to find their way into users’ wallets.