Australia’s ANZ Hits 250,000 Apple Pay Users in Four Months

The number of Australian iPhone owners using Apple Pay has exceeded the expectations of the sole local bank supporting Apple’s mobile payments service. Four months after offering it, ANZ has provided an update saying that 250,000 customers are using Apple Pay, and counting (via the Australian Financial Review).

Alongside making public this number, ANZ has also announced today that its MasterCard customers will be able to add their credit cards to Apple Pay. So far, during the three months of Apple Pay availability, 20% of the eligible user base has loaded its cards to the Wallet app.

The average size of a transaction being put through Apple Pay is 17 per cent more than the value of the average contactless payment, while usage is becoming more more consistent, ANZ said.

According to the available data, ANZ has around 5 million Visa debit and credit card, and American Express credit card customers. Combining that figure with the one from Telsyte, which claims that about half of Australian smartphone owners have an iPhone, and that half of them are iPhone 6s (or maybe 6), the 250,000 figure seems to match that 20% eligible user base, as highlighted by AFR. ANZ has 500,000 MasterCard credit accounts.

The figures ANZ has just released could serve as an example of the potential Apple Pay offers to the financial institutions that sign up for the service. Still, three of the biggest four Australian banks, alongside Bendigo and Adelaide bank, have challenged Apple’s policy of restricting its NFC chip to Apple Pay in a letter to the country’s anti-trust regulator and asked permission to negotiate as a bloc.

Australian banks have been the most resistant to the terms and conditions of signing up for Apple Pay, but big Swiss banks have also refrained from joining the service. Apple managed to break the resistance of Canada’s big five in May.