Opening a Northen Irish acc for Apple Pay

WhoWhatWhere

Mostly because I would greatly appreciate using this service and it seems like Irish banks will take their sweet time signing up to it, because Apple want a fee for each transaction. Essentially if anyone has experience with it, what kind of things should I be wary of? I know perhaps with the sterling crash it may be a bad time to open one.

Yggr of Asgard

So in short, using Apple Pay in Ireland for € is one expensive hobby. If you travel to the UK regularly and want to use it in £ than it makes sense.

Right now to use it you will need to have an UK Apple ID (i.e. a UK address with a UK Debit/Credit card) to be able to use Apple Pay with a base in £. If you use it in € your bank will charge you a fee for currency conversion every time you use it.

You at present can't combine it with Revolut (which would be great) so you will need a traditional bank / card account from one of the banks supported which you can find here: https://www.apple.com/uk/apple-pay/

Nationwide UK is offering a free FlexBasic current account for EEA residents (as part of the EU directive on basic bank accounts) which does support Apple Pay (and Android Pay) but every time you use it in € you get charged 2% conversion fee. No charge for £ transactions.

Right now your best option to use it without paying a currency conversion fee is to get a French bank account in € from bank populaire. However despite the EU directive you will need to travel to france to get it and better speak French as otherwise it's nearly impossible. Plus you need a French Apple ID. Good luck with setting that up in light of money laundering restrictions.

Another alternative for £ is to use boon. Payments with a UK (not Ireland) account but that is extremely expensive as it has loading fees (1%), usage fees, currency conversion fee's (1.25%).

I think that Irish banks can't support Apple pay rather than a possible fee. I don't think that most banks in Ireland are able to support the required protocols. Plus Apple has no commercial interest in Ireland, the market is way to small.

You best bet is to hope they introduce it in more EU countries where you can open an € account, that is going to happen way before Ireland.

So right now, unless you just want to use it in £ it's an expensive and time intensive way of worshipping Apple.

In addition with the £ roller coaster you might not want to park too much money in £. And it increases your transaction cost if the £ changes overnight.

Hope that helps.

Bob24

I'm using Apple Pay in Ireland almost everyday with a French visa card. I can confirm it works very well and there is no fee.

However as Yggr of Asgard mentioned it will certainly be tricky to open an account if you don't live in France and don't speak French (language will also be an issue if you need to communicate with the bank about your account). I a not sure you actually need a French Apple ID though, possibly just to set your phone's reginonal settings to France to be able to add the card and back to Ireland afterwards (which is what I did).

Opening a GBP account to use it here doesn't sound like a great idea to me as you will have currency conversion fees both to transfer to euros to the GBP account and then pay in Ireland in euros with your pounds. If some banks offer account in euros the fee issue mind not be one (assuming they also offer free banking).

While it is a nice feature I like, the reason I am using it is that I had the French visa card already and overall I wouldn't personally bother opening and maintaining a separate account specifically for it (both due to the potential fees and the small time it needs to to take care of an additional account and making sure it is always top-ed up with money).

WhoWhatWhere

Bob24 wrote: »

I'm using Apple Pay in Ireland almost everyday with a French visa card. I can confirm it works very well and there is no fee.

However as Yggr of Asgard mentioned it will certainly be tricky to open an account if you don't live in France and don't speak French (language will also be an issue if you need to communicate with the bank about your account). I a not sure you actually need a French Apple ID though, possibly just to set your phone's reginonal settings to France to be able to add the card and back to Ireland afterwards (which is what I did).

Opening a GBP account to use it here doesn't sound like a great idea to me as you will have currency conversion fees both to transfer to euros to the GBP account and then pay in Ireland in euros with your pounds. If some banks offer account in euros the fee issue mind not be one (assuming they also offer free banking).

While it is a nice feature I like, the reason I am using it is that I had the French visa card already and overall I wouldn't personally bother opening and maintaining a separate account specifically for it (both due to the potential fees and the small time it needs to to take care of an additional account and making sure it is always top-ed up with money).

Yeah I've kinda scrapped the idea for now thanks to both for the help though.