Apple Pay now available to customers of 5 major banks in Singapore

Image credit: Apple

Apple Pay is finally making its big move towards becoming ubiquitous in Singapore. As Channel NewsAsia reports:

Tech giant Apple announced the expansion of its mobile payment service, Apple Pay, in the Republic on Wednesday (May 25). Before this, only customers with cards issued directly by American Express were able to use the service.

It is now available to customers of DBS, OCBC, Standard Chartered and UOB. That translates to about 83 per cent of credit and debit cards in the country.

Singapore’s high credit card penetration of 78 percent was cited by Apple as the reason it’s the first market in Asia (outside of China) to get the service.

Apple isn’t the only company making a mobile payments play in Singapore. The country’s biggest telco SingTel has Dash, which also uses NFC technology to make payments. Samsung Pay is set to launch in the country this year, but appears to be a step slow.

EZ-Link cards, ubiquitous in Singapore as a means of paying for bus and train rides, can also be used to pay for goods at some stores.