Culture

Aussies Won’t Have Access To One Of Apple’s Coolest New iPhone Features

Thanks for nothing, Malcolm Turnbull.

by Caleb Triscari  6 June 2017

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Overnight Apple announced a swag of new products and iPhone tech upgrades at their annual Worldwide Developers Conference in California. While some of the features sound pretty handy, the bad news is they won’t be available to Australians, at least for now.

New products include upgraded versions of the iPad and Macbook. Apple CEO Tim Cook also announced a new version of iOS, the software that runs your iPhone. He saw an opportunity for an incredibly bad joke, and he took it:

But one of the most interesting new features was all about money! Apple announced a new tool that allows people to transfer money over iMessage using their Apple Pay cash account. It’s kind of like a mini bank. The new feature puts Apple in competition with other messaging apps like WhatsApp, which started allowing users to transfer cash months ago.

Australian media outlets got pretty excited about the new feature:

There’s only one problem: Australians won’t be able to use it.

After some uncertainty, Apple has confirmed to Junkee that the new feature will only be available in the US for now. Sorry everyone.

Apple told us that: “Person to person payments and Apple Pay Cash will be available in the US on iPhone SE, iPhone 6 and later, iPad Pro, iPad 5th generation, iPad Air 2, iPad mini 3 and later and Apple Watch this spring.”

But even if it was being rolled out here, there would likely be quite a few speed bumps. Australia’s relationship with Apple Pay isn’t too smooth. In November, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission stopped the big four banks from striking a collective deal with Apple to give them access to Apply Pay.

Since then, ANZ is the only major bank to have reached an arrangement with Apple which allows their customers to use the feature, though the others say they’re still trying. That means that a lot of bank customers could still be locked out even if the payment system eventually makes it way to Australia.

Looks like splitting brunch is going to stay just that little bit harder.