SINGAPORE — Apple Pay — which allows customers to use their Apple mobile devices to tap and pay via contactless payment terminals — could be the catalyst for contactless mobile payments to finally take off here, experts say as all the major banks have now agreed to work with the service.

Mr Michael Yeo, senior market analyst at IDC Financial Insights, said: “What Apple Pay does is to immediately give a large chunk of Apple phone users who have a recent model iPhone the chance to start using mobile payments almost immediately.

“With Apple’s large market share of the Singapore smartphone market, this might be the tool which allows mobile payments to arrive on the scene here in a big way for the first time.”

His comments came as the Apple Pay service in Singapore was extended to customers of DBS/POSB, UOB, OCBC and Standard Chartered yesterday, translating to more than 80 per cent of credit and debit cards here.

Before this, only customers with cards issued directly by American Express could use Apple Pay when the service was introduced in Singapore last month.

Users can register their credit cards on the Wallet app on their iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch, and transactions will be billed directly to the credit cards.

Customers can now already use Apple Pay at supermarket chains NTUC FairPrice, Cold Storage, Giant, convenience store chain 7-Eleven, as well as clothing stores Topshop and Uniqlo, among others.

Yesterday, telco M1 also joined the list of merchants which accept Apple Pay.

According to American Express, the top two types of Apple Pay transactions are for groceries and coffee.

It has also since introduced the first vending machine in Singapore, selling snacks and drinks, that accepts Apple Pay at ION shopping mall.

Before Apple Pay, there have been multiple cashless payment initiatives over the last decade — such as the Near Field Communications (NFC) technology as a mode of contactless payment via phones, and CEPAS (Specification for Contactless e-Purse Application) to promote the use of a single card for multiple purposes — with limited results.

Mr Yeo noted that such NFC efforts “have been hampered somewhat by awareness, complexity in signing up, phone limitations and restrictions imposed by networks. Apple is perhaps one of the only players with the clout in this market to make this sort of payment behaviour mainstream”.

However, Ms Ng Zhi Ying, from market research firm Forrester said: “It will take time before consumers realise the benefits, such as simplicity, convenience, and security, and additional value that Apple Pay brings before adoption can really take off.”

CORRECTION: In an earlier version of this story, we wrongly referred to Ms Ng Zhi Ying as Mr Ng. We apologise for the error.