In past months, the launch of the Apple Card caused quite a stir. During that launch, it was announced that Apple Pay would become available in 40 more countries. You can read my article on this topic via the link.
Turkey was also among the countries waiting to be able to use Apple Pay. With the announcement made by Apple on 06/26/2019, we had to leave our expectations for the next announcement.
According to a report by MacRumors, Apple Pay has become available in 13 more countries, including Greece, Portugal, Romania, and Slovakia. Unfortunately, it still cannot be used in Turkey. Apple, which wants to bring its mobile payment system to millions of people across Europe, has started offering its service in 13 more countries in the region. Many users and banks confirmed via social media posts that Apple Pay had become available in their countries. For example, users in Slovakia can now load their cards onto Apple Wallet from Boon, Edenred, J&T Banka, Monese, N26, Revolut, Tatra banka, and mBank.
Apple Pay will also start supporting a range of popular bank cards in countries such as Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Greece, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Malta, Portugal, Romania, and Slovenia.
Apple Pay, which has been steadily expanding its activities in the European and Middle Eastern markets, had also become available over the past year in countries such as Poland, Norway, Kazakhstan, Belgium, Germany, the Czech Republic, Saudi Arabia, Austria, and Iceland. iPhone 6, 6s, 7, 8, 6 Plus, 6s Plus, 7 Plus, 8 Plus, SE, X, XS, XS Max, and XR users living in these countries will now be able to make payments in stores using the NFC feature on their phones.
Apple CEO Tim Cook had announced last March that Apple Pay would become available in 40 more countries by the end of 2019. It is still not known for certain when the tech giant's payment service will come to Turkey.
At this point, in order to read the situation correctly and take the right actions;
- How can we become a country that not only uses technology, but also knows how to produce it and put it into use?
- What can we do to ensure that technologies developing around the world can be used in our country first, or at an early stage?
- What are the obstacles (laws, infrastructure, etc.) preventing such technologies from being used in our country, and how can we remove them? We need to find answers to questions like these and take the right steps accordingly. Otherwise, we will keep complaining that technology and products either never arrived in our country or arrived too late.
