Commonwealth Bank of Australia has caved over its often acrimonious hold-out against Apple Pay, confirming that it will introduce the mobile payment application in January.
CBA was one of the five big Australian banks that engaged in a a long-running battle with Apple over access to the Near-Field Communication (NFC) controller in iPhones. The saga ended up at the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which ruled against the banks in March last year - derailing their attempts to enter into collective bargaining with the consumer electronic giant.
CBA now joins ANZ - which was not involved in the original bank boycott - in introducing Apple Pay to customers.
Angus Sullivan, group executive of Retail Banking Services, says: “We recently wrote to our customers asking them what the bank could do differently and we received lots of excellent suggestions.
“One of the things we heard repeatedly from our customers is that they want Apple Pay and we’re delighted to be making it available in January 2019."