The (Still) Limited Reach of Apple Pay

Apple’s wireless payment system Apple Pay went live in Italy this week, making the Southern-European country the seventh in Europe in which the service is available. More than two and a half years after the service’s launch in the United States in October 2014, many iPhone users around the world are still waiting for the payment feature to arrive in their country.

As our chart illustrates, Apple Pay is unavailable in all of Latin America along with large parts of Europe and Asia, as negotiations with banks and local card providers over terms and fees prove more difficult than Apple may have expected.