The Apple Pay Belarus rollout began today with the announcement of support by BPS-Sberbank.
The bank says that both Visa and Mastercard are supported.
BPS-Sberbank is the Belarusian arm of PJSC Sberbank, a majority state-owned Russian bank based in Moscow. With a presence in 22 countries, including Sberbank CIB in the US, it is one of the largest banks in Europe and in the top 50 globally. The group has around 137M individual clients and over a million business ones.
As is usual with new countries, Apple hasn’t yet updated its country list which currently lists 57 countries.
Asia-Pacific
- Australia
- China mainland
- Hong Kong
- Japan
- Kazakhstan
- Macao
- New Zealand
- Singapore
- Taiwan
Europe
- Austria
- Belgium
- Bulgaria
- Croatia
- Cyprus
- Czech Republic
- Denmark
- Estonia
- Faroe Islands
- Finland
- France
- Georgia
- Germany
- Greece
- Greenland
- Guernsey
- Hungary
- Iceland
- Ireland
- Isle of Man
- Italy
- Jersey
- Latvia
- Liechtenstein
- Lithuania
- Luxembourg
- Malta
- Monaco
- Netherlands
- Norway
- Poland
- Portugal
- Romania
- Russia
- San Marino
- Slovakia
- Slovenia
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Ukraine
- United Kingdom
- Vatican City
Latin America and the Caribbean
- Brazil
Middle East
- Saudi Arabia
- United Arab Emirates
North America
- Canada
- The United States
Apple Pay Belarus is likely to be added to the list shortly.
Apple Pay is the only mobile wallet app allowed to use the NFC chip in iPhones and Apple Watches, something which may change in Germany after a recent change to the law. The EU antitrust regulator is also investigating whether the same should be required in the remaining 27 EU countries.
A Commission representative said that they were looking at “possible anti-competitive market practices and abusive conduct.”
