It’s Apple Pay day for ING Direct

ING Direct signed up more than 20,000 customers to Apple Pay within 24 hours of going live with the digital wallet, claiming banks must partner and embrace a broader digital “ecosystem” or risk falling by the wayside.

After going live with Apple Pay on Tuesday morning, ING chief Uday Sareen yesterday said 21,500 customers had activated the payments functionality on their iPhones, surpassing expectations of about 10,000.

He said the bank’s account acquisition numbers were 25 per cent higher on Tuesday than the rolling average of the prior 30 days. ING has 517,000 customers who could activate Apple Pay, but only about 70 per cent use iPhones and only the newest models support the wallet.

“For us, at the heart of it was what do customers really want,” Mr Sareen told The Australian on the sidelines of an American Chamber of Commerce in Australia lunch in Sydney.

“If I was to pick one … product feature which we’ve been getting (asked about) over the past eight to 10 months, it has been Apple Pay.”

Macquarie this week also went live with Apple Pay, joining ANZ, American Express and a range of smaller credit unions.

In contrast, Westpac, Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank, and Bendigo and Adelaide Bank have shunned Apple Pay amid a bitter spat with the technology giant about access to the “near field communication” technology that enables contactless payments.

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Source: It’s Apple Pay day for ING Direct – The Australian