The big banks are protecting their EFTPOS baby
Richard,
One of the Big 4 banks in Australia, ANZ, already supports Apple Pay, and has done for a while. Your article mentions the other three who don't. Can't remember if Adelaide/Bendigo is owned by NAB, Westpac or not, losing track of their slurps.
I suspect the real driver is the proprietary EFTPOS system built, and owned, by the Big 4. As it doesn't use EMV (it's still on magstripes and I'd say similar to Switch in the UK), of course it's AU only and I'd imagine a nice source of direct and indirect revenue. Apple are quite right not to support it.
ANZ going to Apple and Google Pay has annoyed the other Big 3 banks.
I'd say this is about the Big Banks getting all pisssed off at the industry not "recognising" or "thanking" then for being protectionist, profiteering, lazy and a bunch of sour grapes. They took the same behaviour when attacking the business model of the Credit Unions (e.g. locking them out eftpos, or persuading retailers to disallow using the Credit button when paying using a Visa Debit card because it bypasses the eftpos network, increasing per-transaction costs to non-eftpos banks). They also try attacking the smaller Tier 2 banks who customers churn to them for much better service, but it's easier to just buy them out and plunder.
S
Biting the hand that feeds IT
