Apple Pay Is Coming To The U.K. Next Month

Apple announced at WWDC that Apple Pay is coming to the U.K. as soon as next month. “We will launch with eight of the most popular banks, more coming this fall,” Jennifer Bailey said. As expected, the feature should work in a lot of stores as soon as it’s available. For instance, you’ll be able to use Apple Pay in London’s subway system.

There are a few new features coming to Apple Pay as well. You will be able to store your rewards cards in the Passbook app, which is now called Wallet. This is an interesting feature as these loyalty cards can help you build a habit, and you might end up using Apple Pay every time you need to pay for your coffee.

Apple also previewed a new tap-and-pay Square reader that will support Apple Pay. Details are very thin on this one, but it’s what you would expect, a white NFC-enabled square that let you pay with your phone.

Apple Pay was introduced at last year’s iPhone 6 event. It has made the headlines again as Google unveiled its competitor, a revamped Google Wallet dubbed Android Pay.

In particular, the Wall Street Journal reported that Google won’t earn any transaction fee from the banks because of new contracting rules with Visa and MasterCard. Credit-card issuers hope that not giving any cut to Google might be a way to get leverage when Apple needs to renegotiate its contract.

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