ANZ adds Mastercard to Apple Pay & Android Pay – Age is no limit nor is the price for its users

ANZ has today made Apple and Android Pay available to half-a-million of their customers who carry an ANZ MasterCard and at the same time revealed to EFTM some interesting insights into their existing Apple Pay users.

The addition of MasterCard is an important plug in a hole for ANZ who are the market leader in the third-party wallet space, being the first bank to offer Apple and Android Pay.

Matt Boss,  Managing Director, Products & Marketing at ANZ told EFTM “As of today, MasterCard will be eligible for Apple Pay and Android Pay, as we continue to broaden the base of usage in customers that can use these mobile payments”

According to Boss, ANZ is largely a Visa business yet “over half a million people have MasterCard with us, it’s really just our credit card base – its important to broaden the people who are eligible to use it”

As with the original launch of Apple Pay, which was in part pushed on by users demanding it on social media, customer demand has played a role in this launch with Matt Boss telling EFTM “we’ve absolutely heard from our customers with MasterCard the desire to use it” going on to say of course that “customers with MasterCard would have tried to use it and can’t”.

Turning to the overall usage of Apple Pay now five odd months on from the ANZ launch, Matt Boss is pretty happy “ it is going really really well” going on to explain that “within about the first 3 months of having Apple Pay, roughly more than 20% of eligible customers have loaded their cards into Apple Pay” which Boss describes as “pretty good uptake and usage”.

What are they using it for? “spend levels range from a couple of dollars per transaction, all the way up to our highest is a little bit north of $15,000” taking in everything “from a cup of coffee right up to luxury purchases”.

But get this – what would you think is the age of the oldest ANZ Apple Pay user?  Nope, you’re wrong – Boss told EFTM “the oldest customer is just shy of 100, with a bunch of people in their 80’s and 90’s” adding “the broad base appeal is there”.

And importantly, this is not just a movement of payments from cards to mobile – Boss told EFTM “spend levels compared to other contactless are just below 20% – really about 17% higher on Apple Pay”

So people using Apple Pay are spending more per transaction with their phone than they are doing with just a card.

And that’s good for ANZ “it is working, it’s absolutely working for us” When asked about the timing of the growth, wondering if all the take up was in the first month and is falling off from there Matt Boss was encouraged by his data “May was our biggest month (after the launch), what I can say is that July was bigger than June” saying “the daily numbers in terms of people provisioning, people becoming spend active, all of that, is a pretty linear line up”

The only way is up, and it seems ANZ are in no way regretting their decision to negotiate the launch of Apple Pay with Apple and follow that with their Android Pay launch.  The other banks don’t see it – but as customers start to realise they aren’t going to get Apple or Android pay for what looks like many years with the other banks, ANZ will likely continue to benefit via new customer acquisition.