UBS, Switzerland's largest bank announces Apple Pay is 'coming soon'

Switzerland's largest bank has today announced that Apple Pay support is "coming soon".

As reported by MacPrime:

With a message on Twitter , the largest Swiss bank announces that it will "soon" offer Apple Pay for its own credit card customers. The big bank has not announced in this tweet exactly when UBS Switzerland will introduce support for Apple's payment service. A request from us is still pending, but it should be "in the coming weeks", the bank said in other tweets.

Wir freuen uns, Apple Pay bald in unser beständig wachsendes Angebot an mobilen Zahlungslösungen aufzunehmen. pic.twitter.com/1Q7467MD10

— UBS Schweiz (@UBSschweiz) April 24, 2020

The tweet, translated, reads:

We look forward to adding Apple Pay to our growing range of mobile payment solutions soon.

The bank already supports its own UBS mobile payment solution, but not Google Pay. A large number of banks in Sweden already support Apple Pay, UBS up until now was a notable exception.

Mac Prime notes that Swiss banks have boycotted Apple Pay for several years. Despite being the seventh country in the world to receive Apple Pay, banks resisted at first, with several choosing to offer their own payment systems instead. Several banks invested heavily in a system called 'Twint', developing and advertising the platform whilst they "vehemently boycotted foreign payment solutions".

Opposition to Apple Pay and competitor services was so stark that in 2018 Swiss Banks were raided by an anti-trust watchdog in the country over allegations they had deliberately refused to release their cards for use with Apple Pay and Samsung Pay to improve the prospects of Twint. UBS' own website claims that its banking network serves 80% of Swiss wealth and one in three households, 120,000 companies and "around 80% of the banks domiciled in Switzerland."