Apple Pay launches in Britain, with hiccups

By Eric Auchard

LONDON, July 14 (Reuters) - Apple introduced mobilepayments in Britain on Tuesday, hoping to make a splash withconsumers familiar with using cards for tap-and-go purchases, asresistance from hold-out banks and stores appeared to evaporate.

Starting Tuesday, Apple Pay is set to be available in250,000 sites, from Tube stations to coffee shops, supermarketsand travel services, making it more widely available than whenit was first introduced in the United States nine months ago.

Users first load their credit and debit card details into anapp on their Apple phones or watches. To pay, customers hold thedevice near a contactless terminal with the user's fingerprintsconfirming their identity.

The service is one of Apple's biggest bets, a way of bindingcustomers more tightly to its phones and new smart watches, aswell as taking a small slice of every retail transaction.

Apple Pay will eventually be supported by all major Britishbanks. The last hold-out, Barclays, confirmed onTuesday its debit card users and Barclaycard credit cardcustomers will be able to use Apple Pay in the future.

However, there also were some first-day teething problems. Another major bank, HSBC Holdings said it was havingtechnical problems that will lead to a two-week delay before itsclients in the United Kingdom can sign up to the service.

Morning subway commuters in the capital were greeted byadvertisements from several major banks encouraging the fractionof their customers with the latest-model Apple phones, tabletsand smartwatches to link their payment cards to Apple Pay.

Tube-operator Transport for London and big retailers Boots,the British pharmacy business of Walgreens Boots Alliance ; Costa Coffee, a part of Whitbread ; supermarketsMarks and Spencer and Waitrose all lined up to supportApple Pay.

Part of Apple Pay's appeal to banks and merchants is itshigher level of security than most other electronic paymentmethods to date, and its ease of use, once customers wadethrough the bureaucratic process of connecting their accounts.

But unlike the consumer electronics business, where Appleregularly releases new computers or phones in dozens ofcountries at once, there is no such thing as a unified paymentsmarket, slowing expansion to further markets.

So far, Apple has been reported to be working to introduceits mobile payments service in China, South Korea and Canada. (Additional reporting by Sinead Cruise and Steve Slater inLondon and Julia Love in San Francisco; editing by David Clarke)