Apple today launches Apple Pay in the UK. A lot of people are asking what this means for PayPal. The answer may surprise you.
PayPal has long been a pioneer of mobile payments. Our founders had the idea of letting people beam money to each other via mobile devices. That vision has stood the test of time, and last year we handled $46 billion in mobile payments. We make it easier and safer to shop and send money on all types of smartphones, including Apple’s iPhone, Android and Windows Phone handsets.
Most people are very familiar with PayPal as the
most trusted and widely used digital wallet in Britain and around the world. Every day, millions of people click on the famous PayPal button when shopping on their favourite websites. Yet there’s much more to PayPal. Our best kept secret is the fact we are the leading open payments platform for businesses. Braintree, PayPal’s mobile payments specialist, makes it incredibly easy for merchants and developers to accept a host of payment methods, including PayPal, credit and debit cards - and Apple Pay. You can read about the UK and global businesses that are accepting Apple Pay from today via Braintree on
Braintree’s blog.
PayPal will also soon enable businesses of all sizes to accept Apple Pay anytime, anywhere with the latest version of our
PayPal Here card reader. (The new version will also accept contactless cards and traditional Chip & PIN cards.) It means that traders will be able to give their customers an even wider choice of how to pay, no matter where they do business. You can register your interest to
buy the new PayPal here card reader now. It will go on sale this summer.
Apple Pay is sure to increase interest in mobile payments. We’ll be following its progress with interest.
Rob Harper