When will Apple stop teasing us with Apple Pay Cash?

Will you use Apple Pay Cash?

Over two years since introduction, Apple has still failed to extend Apple Pay Cash outside the U.S., and no one really knows why.

A fanfare of failure

There may be a good reason why Apple has been unable to enable person-to-person peer to peer payments outside of its home country, but it’s not a great look, given so many other companies have manage to create peer-based payment systems.

The company isn’t saying much:

“Person to person payments and Apple Cash are available only in the U.S. on iPhone SE, iPhone 6 or later, iPad Pro, iPad (5th generation or later), iPad Air 2 or later, iPad mini 3 or later, and Apple Watch,” the company says on its website.

Given that alternative ways to send cash to others exist it’s not a huge problem, I suppose — but there is something rather attractive in the convenience of being able to pass cash to people with an iMessage.

That’s deadly useful when you want to gather in cash for a meal, for example.

And I suppose most Apple Pay users in the company’s U.S. heartlands aren’t particularly concerned about the lack of availability for the service elsewhere.

But in your face

I think even I’d forget about it, were it not for the fact that each time I open my iOS Wallet I’m reminded that the two-year old service I’ve not once been able to use exists, as I stare at that pester message card in my collection in Wallet.

It seems odd to me that no one at the company has thought to remove that pester item from the Wallet if used on a non-U.S. device. Why boast about the existence of a service that to all intents and purposes doesn’t exist where a customer is?

This is one of those little miscalculations that makes people think Apple is losing its touch. Particularly as when you try to set Apple Pay Cash up on a non-U.S. iPhone you never really get told the service isn’t available in any transparent or easy to understand way.

Why not simply tell people the service isn’t available the moment they tap?

Instead you get this euphemistic little message.

‘Please try later’ doesn’t usually mean try next decade. But this time it does…

Notice that it doesn’t actually tell you the service isn’t available where I am, and even suggests I try again later.

Why do that?

Why give people the impression things are ever gonna change?

It has already been over two years since the U.S. service launched and there’s no news on Apple Pay Cash being made available outside of that country yet.

Though there have been false alarms.

One more thing

There is a one more thing to this, of course:

Consider the deep link between Apple Pay Cash and the cashback system for the Apple Card. The two services are so closely conjoined that you almost can’t imagine one without the other.

And this means that if Apple has been unable to introduce Apple Pay Cash internationally for any reason other than it’s own lack of motivation then it is going to find it that much more difficult to introduce Apple Card to its international audience. But getting its Cash service into international hands will at least be a start.

Or should we all just start using Revolut?