Apple Pay is already a well-established participant in regions such as North America, Asia, and Western Europe, and its entry into Brazil brings them one step closer to being a worldwide payment option. Clearhaus accepts Apple Pay payments from retailers throughout Europe.
Brazil is a fraud-prone country. In reality, up to 49% of Brazilian cardholders have been victims of fraud. As a result, fraud protection is a much-desired feature in Brazil. This is additional excellent news for Apple Pay, as it provides Strong Customer Authentication, which is an effective fraud-reduction measure.
Apple Pay is a safe payment method since it employs a tokenization approach to ensure the safe transmission of funds. The user submits his card information during setup and may thereafter complete payments using only his fingerprint or facial ID. Apple Pay is one of the fastest and safest payment options on the market today, thanks to biometric authentication. Apple Pay is compatible with all Apple devices that have touch or face ID.
Apple Pay is coming to Brazil through an exclusive partnership with Itaú Unibanco, the country’s largest private lender. The bank’s 1.2 million cardholders can now open Apple Pay accounts using Visa and Mastercard payment cards.
Currently, only Itaú customers can benefit from the advanced digital wallet. However, there are only about 75 million Mastercard or Visa cardholders in Brazil, and Apple Pay can only partner with more banks in the future to secure part of the huge market potential.
Some merchants are already ready to accept Apple Pay, such as international merchants like Starbucks and TacoBell. Itaú’s partnership with Apple Pay even offers some Brazilian merchants discounts on purchases made with Apple Pay.
The Brazilian market offers some great opportunities for Apple Pay. According to Statista, approximately 153.8 million Brazilians own a mobile phone. Among them, 9.68% (i.e. 14.89 million mobile phones) have IOS operating system. Even though it’s not a huge percentage of the total population, it’s still a large potential customer for Apple Pay. Statista further predicts that the number of mobile point-of-sale payments will quadruple over the next four years, which is certainly good news for Apple Pay.