Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) Today, Visa announced that Visa debit and credit cardholders from French banks Banque Populaire et Caisse d’Epargne (BPCE group) now have access to Apple Pay which launches today.
This gives consumers with compatible iPhones and Apple Watch an easy, secure and private way to pay. Apple Pay can be used at any of the contactless Point of Sale terminals used millions of times each day by Visa cardholders throughout France.
Gérard Nébouy, Regional Managing Director France, commented: “Consumer demand for contactless payments combined with the huge popularity of smartphones incorporating NFC technology has put in place a foundation for a shift from plastic to digital.” He added: “With today’s launch of Apple Pay, it is clear that mobile solutions will fast become a popular way to use a Visa card. French people are really enthusiastic for new ways to pay using the devices they carry each day, and we are proud to be taking an active part in enabling this transformation of commerce.”
Apple Pay can be used to touch and pay wherever Visa contactless payment is accepted. France already has over 400,000 merchant locations live with contactless payment today, with mandates in place for all merchants to accept Visa contactless payment by 2020.
Security and privacy are at the core of Apple Pay. When you add a Visa credit or debit card to the service, your actual payment card details are not stored on the device or on Apple’s servers. Instead, Visa generates a unique payment token (labelled as a Device Account Number in Apple Wallet), which is assigned and stored on your device – your card information is never shared with merchants.
Visa with Apple Pay works with any contactless point-of-sale terminal and is designed to work for payments of any amount using Touch ID to verify the cardholder. The number of French businesses that accept mobile payments over the €20 contactless threshold in their stores, is growing very rapidly and Visa is seeing many more shops and restaurants making the necessary software upgrades to support high value payments – indeed, Visa expects that, by the end of the year, most contactless terminals in France will accept payments of any value made via mobile devices.
Online shopping in apps accepting Apple Pay is as simple as the touch of a finger with Touch ID, so there’s no need to manually fill out lengthy account forms or repeatedly type in shipping and billing information.
Key Visa contactless figures in France (via VisaNet):
• 213 million contactless transactions processed by Visa in 2015
• More than 25 million contactless Visa cards in circulation, with over 577,000 contactless POS terminals in merchants (May 2016)
• €2.2 billion spent with Visa contactless cards in the 12 months to May 2016 (€286 million spent via contactless cards issued in France, during the month of May 2016)