If you’re a customer of RBC or CIBC, I have good news for you. Apple Pay is live for those customers as of today. If you’re with TD Canada Trust, BMO, or Scotiabank, support for Apple Pay is “coming soon” according to the Apple Pay website on Apple.ca. I was able to add my CIBC debit card easily this morning and I will be testing it out later today. In theory, I should be able to use this anywhere contactless payments (aka: Tap To Pay) are accepted.
Apple Pay has support for Visa, MasterCard, and Interac which covers most major debit and credit cards in Canada. Supported cards can be scanned or added manually to Apple Pay by tapping the “Add Credit or Debit Card” option in the Wallet app on iOS 8.1 or later.
I’ll update this post with my experiences with Apple Pay. But if you’ve tried Apple Pay in Canada, please post a comment and share your experience.
UPDATE: ATB Financial and Canadian Tire Bank also support Apple Pay as of today.
UPDATE #2: I used Apple Pay to pay for gas at Petro Canada. It was incredibly easy to use:
- Double tap the home button. Apple Wallet will appear and you can choose the card that you want to use.
- Use Touch ID to pay.
- When prompted, place your iPhone on the payment terminal and wait for audio and haptic feedback to let you know that you have paid.
It was faster to pay this way than to use my debit card the old fashioned way. You can bet I will use this payment method whenever I can.