Here's some good news for people in the UK waiting for Apple Pay to launch there: the Cupertino-based company is in talks with Britain's top banks to launch the mobile payments service, which is officially only available in the US, in the first half of the next year, according to a Telegraph report.
The report notes that negotiations have been "tricky" as at least one of the biggest UK banks has expressed concerns over data collected by Apple Pay. Specifically, the bank is said to be concerned about the amount of "personal and financial information" the iPhone maker wants to collect about its customers.
Interestingly, while banks fear that Apple Pay could "serve as a beachhead for an invasion of the banking industry", they also do not want to miss out on the service, given its success in the US, where it now supports cards from providers that make up around 90 percent of the country's credit card purchases.
A recent report from ITG Investment Research had indicated that Apple Pay, which was launched back in October this year, accounted for 1 percent of all digital payments in November. Google Wallet accounted for 4 percent, although it has been around for nearly three years now.
The news also comes less than a couple of weeks after a job listing on the Apple's website revealed that the company is planning to expand the service globally, specifically across Europe, Middle East, India, and Africa.