Apple Pay now available in Romania
Apple Pay has officially launched in Romania on Wednesday, June 26, being available to clients of several banks, as well as Revolut or Orange Money customers.
The list of banks that announced on June 26 that they brought Apple Pay to their customers includes Banca Transilvania, ING Bank Romania and UniCredit. The clients of Revolut, Edenred, Monese and Orange Money can also use this service. Moreover, Startupcafe.ro reported that OTP Bank, Raiffeisen Bank and BCR would also introduce Apple Pay in their offer soon.
With Apple Pay on iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad and Mac, customers can make fast and convenient purchases in stores, in apps and on websites.
“Apple Pay works on the same contactless, tap to pay terminals that consumers already use when tapping to pay with their debit or credit cards. Over 90% of the point-of-sale (POS) terminals in Romania currently accept contactless payments. By 2020, all POS payment terminals will accept contactless payments” Visa said in a press release.
Apple Pay is presented as a very secure and private service. When a person uses a credit or debit card with Apple Pay, the actual card numbers are not stored on the device, nor on Apple servers. Instead, a unique Device Account Number is assigned, encrypted and securely stored in the Secure Element on the device. Each transaction is authorized with a one-time unique dynamic security code.
With iPhone and Apple Watch, customers can pay with Apple Pay in stores, restaurants, taxis, vending machines and many more places. When shopping in apps or on the web in Safari with Apple Pay, there’s no need to manually fill out the account forms or repeatedly type in shipping and billing information. Every Apple Pay purchase is authenticated with just a glance or a touch with Face ID or Touch ID, or a device’s passcode.
Until now, only two banks and one fintech offered services for mobile payment, namely ING Bank (ING Pay), Banca Transilvania (BT Pay) and Orange Money (Orange Pay), Start-up.ro reported. ING announced on Wednesday that its ING Pay service “reported the fastest adoption rate and the highest utilization rate of the entire ING Group.” Since its launch in July 2018, ING Pay users have made over 4 million transactions, which represents more than 4% of all payments made at a POS with an ING debit card.
newsroom@romania-insider.com
