Apple Pay Expansion Continues In 2015

Apple Inc. AAPL successfully registered one million credit cards in three days when Apple Pay launched earlier this year.

The mobile payment solution has been praised by analysts and security experts ever since it debuted. Their views could change now that hackers have found a simple way to steal an individual's fingerprints. Their technique could impact Touch ID, which is used to authenticate Apple Pay on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

In the meantime, Apple is following through with its plan to expand worldwide. Apple Pay will arrive in the United Kingdom in 2015. The service will also be added to Chevron Corporation CVX gas pumps early next year. Chevron's store locator indicates that some stations have already added Apple Pay support.

Related Link: Rite Aid, CVS Unlikely To Win War Against Apple

"Consumers won't actually adopt [a mobile payment solution] unless you're actually making it easier on them," Zach Goldstein, founder and CEO of Thanx (a loyalty and retention marketing company), told Benzinga. His company developed the first rewards program supported by Apple Pay.

"The challenge that mobile payments have had is that the credit card is not all that hard," Goldstein added. "It's actually pretty straightforward to whip out your card and pay. We haven't seen anything yet that truly makes that experience easier. Apple Pay seems to be the first opportunity to do that."

Unexpected Deals

In addition to the growth of Apple Pay, the iPhone maker recently announced that it had added UnionPay as a payment option for customers in China.

Patrick Moorhead, president and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, called it an "enormous" deal.

"This is so much bigger than the CVS blowup with the exchange folks," Moorhead told Benzinga. "This is massive. This is a lot bigger than any of these payment things in the U.S. Not in terms of dollar figures necessarily, but in terms of the sheer number of people."

Moorhead expects Apple to sign the "best of the best" deals in every major country.

Disclosure: At the time of this writing, Louis Bedigian had no position in the equities mentioned in this report.