Apple Pay has been available in the US since October, but us Brits have been left waiting. But not for much longer. It'll be here in July, so we can start paying for goods and services by waving our iPhones at the sensors.
Google also launched its own mobile payments service, called Google Wallet. And it had the same amount of success. Google recently announced it would rebrand the service as Android Pay, possibly in an attempt to piggyback off the publicity generated by Apple Pay.
If anyone can crack mobile payments, it's Apple. About 40 per cent of all smartphones sold in the UK are iPhones, so it already has a huge potential market share. Much of the infrastructure is already in place thanks to the rise of contactless payments on card, which we're also increasingly getting used to in the UK.
MasterCard estimates that by 2020, every shop in Europe will take contactless payments. From the start of next year, all new payment terminals will have to work with contactless. As the iPhone uses essentially the same technology, it seems Apple Pay could arrive at just the right time.
