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Comment by jjcm | Hacker News Reader

Sharing a personal anecdote - when Apple Pay first launched, it only worked in the US. A more accurate statement though was it could only be set up in the US. I very shortly after moved to Australia, where tap-to-pay is the standard.

It was kind of crazy because despite not officially being supported, Apple Pay worked everywhere in Australia. Whereas only a small handful of merchants supported it in the US, 99% of point of sales in Australia supported it because it was based off the standard.

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This also worked in reverse. When I was visiting the USA, when I tapped my credit card to pay on terminals that were seemingly set up for Apple Pay, it was mind-blowing for some people. I didn’t realise contactless cards were so rare over there at the time.

I had a similar experience. After it was released in the US, I took a trip to the Netherlands. I had a lot of “how did you do that?” reactions from merchants when I paid for things with my phone.

I had a similar experience traveling in Europe! More than one merchant thought I had “hacked” them initially.

I had the same experience as you on a trip to the Netherlands. Ironically, the only place where it didn't work was the Apple store in Amsterdam. I don't know if that was an actual technical limitation, or they were aware that it was not yet available in the Netherlands and so didn't even let me try with my phone and its US credit card.

Depends on country, and how contactless cards being the norm in many places meant there was less push among people for payment with phones, compared to USA where it seems it no modern bits for card payments happened between introduction of magnetic strip and phone-based EMV2 NFC payments.

I remember changing card ~2012, in Poland, because my ancient Visa Electron with magstripe-only was confusing to new cashiers who thought lack of chip meant it's contactless. Around that time phone-based "cards" were also widely promoted though the tech wasn't exactly ready yet so you needed cooperation between banks and telcos to provide secure element.

Same, I used Apple Pay in Germany before it was officially launched there and people were very surprised that I could just pay with my Watch. Contactless payment was already becoming more prevalent, so it worked in a lot of places.

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