Unfortunately not yet in Malaysia.

However, they pretty much supports Apple Pay in many other markets that they operate in (SG, HK, AU, UK). Therefore I hold onto the hope that HSBC will announce support for Apple Pay one day, hopefully sooner than later.

Managed to add HSBC Platinum Visa card into Apple Pay.

Screenshot below:


Wondering if any other banks will be officially launching Apple Pay soon alongside HSBC Bank.

Just looked through HSBC MY’s FAQ, both Visa and MasterCard are supported.



Hopefully it’s just a temporary glitch. If anyone have managed to add their HSBC MasterCard, feel free to share with us!

Is there anyone else having issue paying with HSBC Visa Credit Card on Apple Pay?

Like all of my attempts to pay has been “Declined”.

Hey andrewtho, totally agree with what you have mentioned above.

However, have you considered that there might be "controls" that the store have put in place before they even enable the "Sale" mode on the EDC/Card Terminal? Controls like only enabling it once they are satisfied that you won't be able to sneakily use a payment method they wont allow (e.g. making sure that you have kept your phone away and took out your physical card).

Not directly related to the case above, I have personally met merchants who will only accept MyDebit Debit Cards (won't take BigPay prepaid card because those do not get processed over MyDebit) EVEN THOUGH their Card Terminal and Merchant Service Provider could potentially process all variants of Visa/MasterCards ("potentially" because they will only allow MyDebit so I can't try out cards other than MyDebit).

The point I wanted to drive home is that, "Capability" does not equate to "Acceptance". Won't shock me if there are some merchants who can accept AMEX (Capability), ACTIVELY discourage/prohibits their users from paying with AMEX (Acceptance) just to save on the MDR.

Never have I once used the term "Apple Pay" when checking-out, anywhere in the world that I have been to.

I always tell them that I want to pay via "Card Payment" so that they enable the Sale mode on the Card Terminal which gives me the flexibility to choose how I wanted to pay (Chip & Pin, Physical Contactless, or best of all Apple Pay). Don't think I have ever been in a situation where I can't use Contactless Payment (physical or Apple Pay) if I were to tell them Card Payment.

Agree on the above. So far all issuers except one opted to only offer Apple Pay to Credit Card users.

I suppose this may have something to do with the economics of allowing Apple Pay (IIRC rumour has it that for Credit Cards the fee to issuer is ~0.15% whereas for Debit Cards it might be a fixed fee). With a relatively low and decreasing Card Interchange (CC: ~0.5%, DC/PC: varies by amount but overall ~0.1%) percentage for banks, the fee they have to pay to Apple is significant. I have no inside info but I reckon Maybank might be making nothing or even a loss for allowing Apple Pay for Debit Card users.

However, I still hope that BigPay will support Apple Pay soon so that I don’t have to carry 1 extra card while travelling.

No doubt that being part of something big/in-demand like Apple Pay would provide intangible benefits that is beyond dollar and cents.

However, most banks are profit-seeking businesses afterall. If supporting Apple Pay by itself (purely financials) is loss-making, banks won't be keen in adopting it UNLESS they are able to make money elsewhere by implementing Apple Pay. For example, a bank may use Apple Pay as a Brand Awareness / Differentiating factor to draw in customers to their CC/DC products which may be loss-making, however, if enough customers signs up for auxiliary services such as Balance Transfers or even other higher-margins products such as Personal Loans, net-net they could at least break-even or even generate higher profits.

You made a very important point on TnG eWallet & GrabPay. However do consider that these 2 eWallets are start-ups / emerging companies where investors would overlook their short-term financials so long they provide future upsides. However, no investors would allow their portfolio companies to just keep burning cash with no feasible plans to stop the cash burn, afterall, cashflow and profits are paramount for most businesses.

Back in the days (~5 years ago) when GrabPay just released, IIRC Grab Platinum customers get 20x points for RM1 spent on GrabPay, however fast forward to today, you are only getting 0.75x points for RM1 spent. This is a massive change which has allowed Grab to stop their cash-burn drastically once they have achieved the scale they need.

If a ficticious bank, XYZ Bank, offered Apple Pay for both CC & DC users initially and decided to stop supporting Apple Pay for DC users citing unprofitability for doing so (and after onboarding sufficient no. of CASA users they targeted). Just for a second imagine how big of a backlash the bank would receive from such an action.

Therefore, banks have to play it safe by only releasing products that they believe could be sustained for a foreseeable future. I very much hope that the rest of the participating banks support Apple Pay for Debit Cards as well, however this would only happen if the banks are convinced it makes economic sense.

TLDR:
1. Economics trumps almost everything in business.
2. Users do are not as forgiving towards Financial Institutions as compared to that of a Start-Up.

PART 1/2

Debit Card Interchange fee for Malaysia
'0.21%' or 'RM0.70 + 0.01%', whichever lower (Visa & Mastercard only; Anything above RM350 will be "RM0.70+0.01%").
Debit Card Interchange fee for Australia
0.20%
Debit Card Interchange fee for the US
USD0.21 + 0.05%

(Interchange fee for Singapore don't seemed to be publicly available. Source for Debit Card Interchange Fee: Google "[Country Name] Debit Card Interchange Fee]")

Based on what I can find on Apple Pay fees:
1. The cost to issuers for debit cards is at USD0.005 per transaction (~RM0.021). (Source: Affinity Credit Union v. Apple Inc complaint)
2. Apple charge an "annual fee" to issuers at ~USD0.25 (~MYR1.05) per card enrolled into Apple Pay in addition to the USD0.005 per transaction charge. (Source: Swiss Media Outlet, FuW)
3. Apple seemed to be charging almost the same fee structure to all issuers irrespective of countries (Except for UK/EU due to the very low interchange fee there). It was reported that Australian banks are charged similar fees as their American counterpart. (Source: Australian Financial Review, Apple Pay costs for Australian banks revealed)

PART 2/2

With the information above, let's do some maths from a Malaysian Issuer point of view:
1. The user have to spend between RM500 (RM350+RM150, under the 0.21% category) and RM3,500 (under the RM0.70 + 0.01% category), both before Apple's cut of USD0.005 per transaction, to recoup that ~USD0.25 annual fee for the 1 debit card enrolled. This could be any spending done on the debit card, even outside of Apple Pay.
2. Any transaction below RM10 will be a loss to the issuer (RM10 * 0.21% = RM0.021 interchange revenue).
3. Transactions above RM350 will fall into the "RM0.70 + 0.01%" category, therefore issuer's ability to earn from interchange revenue seemed to be severely limited (e.g. RM1,000 transaction, under the "0.21%" category issuers will earn RM2.10 while under the "RM0.70 + 0.01%" category issurs will earn RM0.80 instead. The discrepancy will be wider as the transaction amount increases).

In contrast, the following is from an Australian & American Issuer point of view:
1. [US] Banks in the U.S. do not need to worry about the per transaction fee as the minimum debit card interchange fee is at USD0.21 (USD0.21 > USD0.005).
2. [US] Banks in the U.S. could recoup the annual fee once the user has spent at least USD80 on the card (USD80*0.05% + USD0.21 = USD0.25), before Apple's cut of USD0.005 per transaction.
3. [AU] Banks in Australia could recoup the per transaction fee for transactions above ~AUD4.00 (AUD4.00 * 0.2% = AUD0.008 (~USD0.005)).
4. [AU] Banks in Australia could recoup the annual fee once the user has spent at least AUD180 (AUD180 * 0.2% = AUD0.36 (~USD0.25)) on the card, before Apple's cut of USD0.005 per transaction.

Comparing Malaysia to the US & AU markets and assuming that all 3 countries' issuers paid the same fees:
1. Nominally (not taking into account exchange rate), Malaysian issuers would have harder time recouping the per transaction fee (minimum spend of 10 (in MYR) vs 4 (in AUD)).
2. Nominally (not taking into account exchange rate), Malaysian issuers would have harder time recouping the "annual fee" (minimum spend of 500-3,500 (in MYR) vs 180 (in AUD)).

We have no idea on the debit card spending distribution in Malaysia is but I suppose that banks have done the calculations based on current usage data and determined that they are not comfortable financially in offering Apple Pay for debit card users. However some banks may opt to still support it for other reasons such as future cross-selling opportunities and image/brand perception, even if it doesn't make sense financially.

Most importantly, all of the above are just Apple Pay related fees. We have yet to take into account fees such as maintenance, one-off system upgrades to support Apple Pay, and other variable cost that is needed to offer debit cards by a bank.

Now that I have made the calculations above, I really hope that Malaysian issuers have managed to negotiate a different fee structure than the one above or else not much banks would have the incentive to offer Apple Pay for Debit / Prepaid card I suppose.

TLDR: Apple Pay fee structure seemed to be the same across the world which could be a major challenge for Malaysian issuer to support Apple Pay for Debit Card users.

Totally agree on the above!!!

IIRC, some banks have done either one or even both of the following:
1. Have increased or is increasing the Contactless per transaction limit from RM250 to RM1,000.
2. Removed cumulative Contactless limit (so... basically you can tap till you hit your credit limit I suppose?).

The above 2 reasons are why I have made a decision to not bring the physical card out with me anymore once I have enrolled them into Apple Pay. At least Apple Pay would require biometrics authentication before payment as compared to no authentication in a phsical contactless card.

Couldn’t use Apple Pay (Visa) at one of the Korean convenience store chain.

The error message when the transaction failed IIRC was “Timed Out [Error Code]” and the terminal is a “Plug n Play” branded terminal that looks similar to the one below:


The store-keeper asked if I had a physical card beforehand and advised that Apple Pay may take a lot longer to go through. I am wondering if it’s a connection issue that has caused the “Time-Out” (affecting all card transactions) or did the store managed to “ban” all mobile contactless payments.

I abandoned the purchase and left.

The person in front of me I believe used TNG eWallet or GrabPay, went flawlessly but that was processed through the POS machine instead of the EDC terminal.

Not sure if it is related. Apple Pay was supposed to launch in South Korea back in 30 November 2022, however the launch got delayed (still yet to launch as of today) due to concerns on financial data residency by the regulators.

Understand that contactless payments typically works so long that the merchant has a compatible terminal & supports the card network used (Visa / MasterCard), but I wonder if the South Korean authorities has requested for a halt in all Apple Pay transactions upon realising their abovementioned concerns.

From my understanding, blocking Apple Pay transactions based on BIN/IIN ranges (First 6-8 digits of card number; typically identifies the card issuer & country) is not impossible. Checking on my own enrolled cards, Visa/MasterCard typically assigns BIN/IIN that are no longer needed by the previous financial institution (either no longer operates or merged with others) for Apple Pay tokens. Acquirers could easily find out the BIN/IIN ranges used for Apple Pay and proceed to block all transaction originating from these ranges.

Anyways, if you have any idea what error code popped up on the terminal, you can refer to ISO 8583 to look up the meaning behind it.

Saw someone posted the following photo (Credits: Amir Azmi & Malaysian Land Public Transport Fans (MLPTF)):


It seems that card payments has been enabled for MRT2's ticket vending machines. Hope that they will decide to enable card payments in the other lines as well (MRT1 IIRC has card terminals but not activated) and would be best if they decides to allow Open-Loop Payments directly at the barriers too!

Glad to see that we are moving towards the right direction of integrating payment cards with public transport for convenience!

Based on the implementation done overseas (SG, GB & AU), in order to ensure a smooth flow at the barrier, what they have implemented was something called Account-Based Ticketing (ABT). Basically at the backend, there’s a system which records when your card is used (time-stamps, origin, destination) which also keep tracks of how much you owed them and charges your card depending on their own policies (SG for certain cards they will only charge upon reaching certain amount owed, GB & AU IIRC charges the card accordingly after the day ends (after midnight) and stop charging when a cap is reached).

As for the terminal replacements, from what I can find, MRT2 gates are installed with the CR3600 reader from VIX Technology which is EMV Pre-Certified for Visa & Mastercard:


Even for older card readers deployed at LRTs and MRT1, IIRC they are already NFC compliant given that my phone prompts me all the time to unlock for Apple Pay whenever it is in proximity to the reading area. If those terminals are not EMV compliant like the VIX reader above, there is a solution which could be installed into pre-existing terminals called VSAM to make those terminals compliant. The VSAM solution was deployed in Vancouver & Montréal in Canada when they were upgrading their fare collection system to support Open-Loop Payments (OLP).

Lastly, while most of the OLP & ABT deployments I have came across was delivered by a company named Cubic (London, Sydney, NY, Chicago etc.), VIX has deployed a similar project in Dallas. Some articles dated back in 2015 indicates that VIX Technology won the contract to provide Fare Collection System for RapidKL. Hopefully the system deployed in Malaysia could be upgraded to support both OLP & ABT easily.

I hope that the Transportation Ministry / RapidKL sees the benefit of implementing the above and get it done in the current government term :respect:

7 Months has passed since Apple Pay launched last August and we currently have 4 bank partners offering Apple Pay.

Does anyone has any information to hint on the Apple Pay launch plans for the following banks?
1. UOB/Citi Malaysia (Offers Apple in SG)
2. OCBC Malaysia (Offers Apple Pay in SG)
3. Hong Leong Bank (Offers Google Pay in MY)
4. Public Bank (Offers Google Pay in MY)
5. RHB Bank (Offers Samsung Pay in MY)

Was hoping that the adoption of Apple Pay among banks in Malaysia would be much faster than the current rate.

Open-Loop Payments (payment by Credit/Debit Card) was mentioned during the interview for MRT2 line.

youtu[.]be/o9GAFBu9ON8?t=120

Can't post full link given my Probation Mode. But just delete the "[" and "]" from the link above and you should be able to view the video at the section discussing Open-Loop Payments.

Once they start to accept Debit/Credit Cards as part of the Open-Loop Payments (OLP), I don't see a reason we can't use Apple Pay at the gates. This depends on the payment networks they support as well, SG accepts Visa & Mastercard (V/MC), London & Sydney accepts AMEX in addition to V/MC.

With that said, would be great if RapidKL could implement the "Express Travel" feature as well when they launch OLP. Express Travel allows users to tap at gates without having to authenticate with Face ID / Touch ID similar to how we use TNG cards now at the gates.

Trust me, it is quite an annoyance after a while to have to authenticate before tapping at gates especially when you are taking multiple modes of transportation as part of your journey (e.g. LRT transit to Bus may require 4 taps in total). Worse still, imagine having to do a Face ID authentication during boarding/edit while carrying things on both hands.

For those who are concerned of risks brought by Express Travel: This is an opt-in feature on the users' end and this feature is designed to only work at public transport terminals (e.g. at gates / on buses). You still have to authenticate before paying for other purchases.