Canada Ripe for Apple Pay, Ranks 2nd in Mobile Payments ‘Readiness’ Index: MasterCard

Apple Pay launched in the US first, but Canadians are ready to use their mobile phones to make a purchases. While previous PayPal surveys have already emphasized this fact, there is another factor that Apple and its partners such as MasterCard need to consider when deciding in which country to launch next.

To get a cross sectional view of the global market, MasterCard created a six-tiered mobile readiness index in which a score of 60 out of 100 is described as “normal”, says the WSJ.

Canada is among the top three countries ready for mobile: The PayPal survey assessed consumer readiness, while other surveys have looked into the technical challenges such platforms may face.

The MasterCard index analyses consumer readiness, environment, financial services, infrastructure, mobile commerce clusters, and regulation before giving the final verdict.

Canada ranks second in the MasterCard index, with 42 points, just behind the leader, Singapore, which received 45.6 points. Canada ranks even higher than US (41.5 points) , but the latter is given high marks for environment, because household expenditure per capita is three times the average for other countries.

In other words, Canada is ready for Apple Pay. Now, the question is: When will Apple finalize the terms with local banking partners?