Trusted Reviews is supported by its audience. If you purchase through links on our site, we may earn a commission. Learn more.

MasterCard: The UK is ‘completely ready’ for Apple Pay

Apple Pay has yet to be confirmed for a UK rollout but, according to MasterCard, Britain is now ‘completely ready’ for the mobile payment service.

With recent reports suggesting the Cupertino-based company could announce its Apple Pay UK release plans later today, June 8, payments specialist MasterCard has revealed the UK already has the infrastructure in place to support the platform.

Fielding questions on how prepared the UK is for an Apple Pay introduction, Mike Cowan, MasterCard’s head of emerging payments told us: “We are completely ready [for Apple Pay in the UK].”

Speaking during the firm’s ‘Future of Payments’ event, he added: “One of the advantages of doing this on a global platform is that we have the technology there and it is switched on, we just have to connect the services in the back end.

Quizzed on how long it would take to ‘turn on’ Apple Pay support in the UK, he teased: “It only takes a couple of days.”

Apple Pay was introduced last year, with the NFC-utilising mobile payments service compatible with the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and the Apple Watch.

Despite Apple Pay not yet supporting UK bank accounts, visiting US nationals are already making use of the service in select UK locations.

One system already supporting visiting Apple Pay users is Transport for London.

People are already using Apple Pay on the TfL network, even though Apple Pay has yet to launch in the UK,” Shasi Verma, TfL’s Director of Customer Experience revealed.

He added: “The system is opened up to everything right now.”

Related: iPhone 6S release date

With Apple’s annual developer conference set to kick off later today, it has been widely suggested that the company will use its WWDC 2015 keynote to confirm wider Apple Pay compatibility.

One of the first territories outside of the US expected to receive support is the UK.

Stay tuned to TrustedReviews for all the latest on Apple Pay support and wider WWDC announcements.

Why trust our journalism?

Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.

Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.

author icon

Editorial independence

Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.

author icon

Professional conduct

We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.

Trusted Reviews Logo

Sign up to our newsletter

Get the best of Trusted Reviews delivered right to your inbox.

This is a test error message with some extra words