Starting in November, Apple Pay will be expanding to Belgium as well. It will however be exclusively available to customers of BNP Paribas Fortis, others will have to wait until next year. Will mobile payment get a new impulse?
Pay by smartphone
BNP Paribas Fortis customers can add their debit or credit card to their Apple Wallet, Belgian newspaper De Tijd reports. This also applies to cards from subsidiaries Hello Bank and Fintro and credit cards from Visa and MasterCard. All of them are now able to pay using their smartphone through NFC (Near Field Communication) in stores.
The arrival of Apple Pay may give new impetus to mobile payments in Belgium, a feat that competitor Google Pay has not really achieved. There are other mobile payment services in Belgium that work with other technology, such as scanning a QR code, but that is somewhat more cumbersome. Examples of the latter are payment apps such as Glase (formerly Seqr) or Payconiq (which merged with Bancontact this spring).
