Apple Pay Gains Another Round Of Issuers

More than 80 financial institutions now support Apple Pay, as 9to5 Mac reported that February’s list of additional banks and credit unions that support the mobile payment service recently grew by 19.

To be more precise, the list now tops around 90, according to Apple’s online list of supported issuers updated Feb. 17.

It appears as though Apple Pay acceptance is picking up as the White House announced last week (Feb. 13) that Apple Pay is joining EMV chip-and-PIN as a standard for roughly 9 million Federal payment cards, including debit-card accounts used for distributing Social Security and Veterans benefits. Also in the pipeline is the ability for the federal government to accept Apple Pay within its buildings, as well as a planned rollout in certain national parks. Apple Pay is picking up steam with issuers like Visa, MasterCard and American Express, which continue to accept it across more cards.

According to 9to5Mac, Apple CEO Tim Cook said around 750 banks and credit unions signed up last month and said the company is working with a total of 2,000 institutions to bring on support for Apple Pay.

The list of new banks/credit unions that recently added Apple Pay include:

Affinity Federal Credit Union, Cabela’s CLUB, Central Bank, Credit Union of Southern California, Farmers & Merchants Bank of Long Beach, First National Bank of Omaha, First Sentry Bank, FirstBank, Grow Financial Federal Credit Union, Ideal Credit Union, Morgan Stanley, Redwood Credit Union, State Department Federal Credit Union, Teachers Credit Union, Technology Credit Union, The Northern Trust Company, TIB-The Independent BankersBank, United Federal Credit Union and Utah First Federal Credit Union.

In addition, Apple Pay will be entering into competition with smartphone rival Samsung, which will be debuting a non-NFC payment reader on the new Galaxy S6, and the lingering possibility that Google could rollout a new payment method with Plaso. Aside from the new partners, Apple is also rumored to be working on the new Apple Pay 2.0, which would feature a more energy efficient NFC feature that can run on low battery, as well as user-driven enhancements for smoother operation.