American Express to launch ApplePay shortly in Australia

The American Express slogan “don’t leave home without it” is fairly old, but if it still ticks around upstairs in your head and you have an iPhone, you’ll soon get to retire it since and for all, as Amex is rolling out Apple Pay, and one of the first places it’s happening in is Australia.

Expected by the end of the year, Australia will join Canada as one of two places that will see ApplePay support on the iPad Air 2, iPad Mini 3, Apple Watch, and most importantly iPhone 6, with these two nations being the first places to get support for the cashless payment technology outside of America.

You will need an Amex card if you want to try this, that said, with Apple Pay connecting to a consumer, small business, or corporate card, and able to be used where ever contactless payments are accepted, such as the current “tap and go” technologies found at the register, but instead of reaching for a credit card, you’ll be able to use your phone or smartwatch, if you have one.

“With our global reach, we are able to bring Apple Pay to Card Members quickly in these important countries,” said Tony Prentice, Vice President for Mobile Products and Payments at American Express.

“We believe it is critical to be on the forefront of seamless and innovative payment solutions for our Card Members and we are pleased to be able to deliver on that with Apple Pay.”

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The rollout of Amex’s digital card system won’t only exist for contactless payments, offering up real-time notifications of purchases with details about what has been bought and where, while the security is handled from a number-less system, with no card numbers stored on the device. Instead, American Express says a unique account number is assigned and stored locally in a secure location on the device, while transactions and purchases are authorised with a once-off security code.

“Our customers love their experience with Apple Pay and we want to bring it to as many of our users worldwide as possible,” said Jennifer Bailey, Vice President of Apple Pay.

“With a global issuer like American Express, we are thrilled to seamlessly bring our easy, secure and private way to pay to more customers internationally.”

Unfortunately, there’s no concrete date as for when American Express plans to roll this out locally or in Canada, citing only “this year”, even though there isn’t much of “this year” left. That said, it’s still faster than other nations, with Hong Kong, Singapore, and Spain not slated to get the technology until sometime next year.