Apple Pay to land in Australia this year

Apple has confirmed its Apple Pay mobile payments service will land in Australia this year through a partnership with American Express. 

The consumer tech giant's CEO Tim Cook today said Apple Pay would be expanded to five more countries before the end of 2016.

He revealed Australians and Canadians would be able to access the payments service before the end of this year through a partnership with American Express.

It marks the first multi-country expansion for Apple Pay, which launched in the US last October and landed in the UK this past July.

The local deal would mean only American Express cardholders will be able to use the service in Australia.

American Express confirmed it would bring Apple Pay to card members this year, meaning the company's customers will be able to add their cards to the mobile wallet.

In the US and UK, Apple partnered with numerous banks as well as several credit card companies, including Amex, MasterCard and Visa. 

Cook did not mention whether Apple Pay had signed up with any other organisations in Australia. Apple said it had nothing further to announce.

MasterCard and Visa have been contacted for comment, as have the big four Australian banks.

NAB, the Commonwealth Bank, ANZ, Westpac and MasterCard had no partnerships to announce.

Visa declined to comment.

Users swipe their iPhone over a compatible merchant terminal at point of sale to make a payment. The buyer is prompted by their device to choose which credit or debit card (stored within Passbook) to pay with. The transaction is then authenticated using TouchID.

Apple Pay assigns a unique device account number to the card, which is encrypted and stored in the iDevice's secure element. Transactions are authorised through a one-time unique dynamic security code.

Apple boosts enterprise sales

The consumer giant today revealed a 22 percent jump in revenue for the quarter ended September 27, up to US$51.5 billion, and a U$2.6 billion boost in net profit to US$11.1 billion.

Apple chief executive Tim Cook said the full 2015 fiscal year was the company’s most lucrative ever, with revenue growing 28 percent to US$234 billion.

While pointing to historically successful retail products such as its iPhones for the result, Cook singled out the enterprise segment as a big earner for Apple in the most recent quarter.

Apple has traditionally been weak in the enterprise arena, but Cook said alliances with IBM and Cisco had helped boost the segment.

For the twelve months to September this year, Cook said Apple’s enterprise business grew 40 percent on the previous year to US$25 billion.

iPads were the black spot in Apple’s latest set of figures. Sales missed analyst expectations of 10.2 million units, coming in at 9.88 million, continuing the decline since 2014. 

With Juha Saarinen