Image: © Kaspars Grinvalds/Stock.adobe.com
Bank of Ireland customers can now pay for goods using Apple Pay, three years after the payment platform first arrived in Ireland.
A few months after Google Pay was made available to Bank of Ireland customers, Apple Pay has now joined the fold. According to RTÉ, account holders can now link their account with the mobile payment technology. This has been made available after the launch of the bank’s latest mobile app.
Owners of devices using the iOS operating system – such as the iPhone or Apple Watch – can use them to pay for goods in store, as well as to store card information for making online payments.
Speaking of Apple Pay’s arrival, Bank of Ireland’s director of business transformation, Christine Hamill, said: “This is another important addition to our digital payment offering, following on swiftly from the roll-out of the new mobile app, and we look forward to bringing more new features to customers over the coming months.”
The move comes three years after Apple Pay made its debut in Ireland to account holders with Ulster Bank and KBC. Until a recent IT infrastructure upgrade, Bank of Ireland could not facilitate Apple Pay transactions. This now makes Permanent TSB the only bank in Ireland not to facilitate Apple Pay integration, however, this is expected to change in the coming weeks.
Record number of contactless payments
Last August, Bank of Ireland announced that those with NFC-enabled Android devices can connect their debit, credit cards and business debit cards to Google Pay.
This was four years after its arrival in Ireland when it was made available to account holders with AIB and KBC. Following its Bank of Ireland launch, Hamill said that the arrival of Google Pay was an “important addition” to its services.
A report recently published by Banking and Payments Federation Ireland (BPFI) found that contactless payments have reached a record high in Q3 2020 with more than 182m transactions taking place in Ireland valued at almost €2.9bn.
By the end of September this year, almost 5.1m debit cards and 1.7m credit cards were contactless enabled. BPFI chief executive, Brian Hayes, said: “These figures clearly demonstrate the growing demand for contactless payments, allowing consumers to conduct fast, simple and secure transactions during the current pandemic.”
