“China’s iPhone users will have to wait some more to use the Apple Pay payment system because the latest update to the popular smartphone’s operating system does not support bank cards from UnionPay, the only company that handles interbank payments in the country,” Caixin reports. “A UnionPay employee who declined to be named said the company has not reached any agreements with the U.S. tech company, and no timetable for cooperation has been set.”
“Apple Inc. released its latest operating system — iOS 8.3 — on April 9, but it does not support China UnionPay,” Caixin reports. “When Apple sent software developers a test version of the new operating system in February, it said iOS 8.3 would support UnionPay, a development that received broad media attention.”
“In the United States, Apple Pay says it gets 0.15% of the 2% fee paid by merchants for each credit-card payment and half a penny for each debit card payment,” Caixin reports. “But Chinese banks argued those charges were too steep, an employee of a large bank said. Many large banks that are already part of mature point-of-sale networks do not want to lose such a large percentage of their profits in a deal with Apple Pay, he said.”
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MacDailyNews Take: Ugh.
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