When is Apple Pay launching in Austria?

According to Wikipedia, Austria is

one of the 14 richest countries in the world in terms of GDP (Gross domestic product) per capita, has a well-developed social market economy, and a high standard of living.

So what is stopping Apple to release Apple Pay here in Austria? It’s not like we don’t have any money to spend — we are ready. There are NFC terminals everywhere, I pay €2,- for my coffee every morning with my credit card and that’s not too unusual here. I’ve even seen vending machines supporting NFC technology. You don’t get strange looks from people, because it has been standard for quite a while. I usually pay with cash not more than once or twice a month and there’s plenty of other people doing the same.

I remember when I was in Germany, I had problems to pay with my card at supermarkets and if I they had card terminals, they didn’t support NFC.

We also have several modern banks, offering NFC stickers, which you can put on your phone. I used to have one of these, but it was ugly, so I threw it away. It looks like these banks are looking into NFC options, so Apple Pay would probably be a good fit.

There’s banking apps supporting QR code transactions and I’m also able to approve bank transactions with Touch ID.

I talked to my bank consultant about Apple Pay a few months ago and she told me that she does not know about any talks with Apple at the moment, so it seems like a release in Austria is still far away.

With this weeks launch of Apple Pay in Italy I was given hope again. Maybe Apple has plans to launch it’s service later this year in Germany and Austria as well.

To conclude my thoughts: I am so ready for Apple Pay and with the recent news of Austria planning to introduce an app for passport and drivers license (sorry, I couldn’t find an English article) it seems like our government is also looking to modernize documents. That would mean we could leave the house without bringing any kind of wallet. Everything would always be on our phones.

Since Quick is shutting down this Summer, my university has already started working on making NFC payments available on the campus, so we don’t have to start paying with coins. This would also mean that I could pay my parking tickets, food and coffee everywhere on the campus with Apple Pay.

Let’s hope Italys Apple Pay rollout was just the start for Central European countries and others will follow soon.