ING Belgium adds Apple Pay support to 1.4 million cards

Apple watch Apple Pay (Image credit: iMore)

What you need to know

Belgian bank ING has added support for Apple Pay.
1.4 million customers can now add their cards to the Wallet app.

ING Belgium has added support for Apple Pay, bringing the contactless payment system to 1.4 million customers who use the ING Banking app with their cards.

Announced via press release and spotted by MacRumors, the move means that customers can make contactless payments using their iPhones and Apple Watches. Online payments will also be supported on iPads and Macs, too.

"We're constantly looking for new ways to help our customers manage their money even easier, and Apple Pay is a great fit," said Amaury Vanthournout, Director of Payments at ING Belgium. "We've seen a major behavioral shift among our customers as a result of the pandemic, many of whom have become hesitant to use cash. Half of all payments are now contactless, a steep rise from 13% a year ago. By introducing Apple Pay in the ING Banking app, we are seizing the momentum by offering our customers a new payment method that offers incredible ease of use in shops, online and on the go."

ING already offers Apple Pay in various other European countries but it's taken it a little longer than most to get in on the act in Belgium. In fact, it's three years since Apple brought Apple Pay to the country after first launching it in the United States in 2014. Apple Pay has since become one of the best iPhone features and people make constant use of it.

ING customers can learn how to set their cards up on the ING website.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.