Previously only available to American Express cardholders, Apple Pay broadened its potential user base in Singapore.

Now, customers with Visa and MasterCard cards from five leading local banks can add them to Apple Pay. The local banks are DBS, OCBC Bank, POSB, Standard Chartered and UOB.

Apple Pay launched in April in Singapore, but only for American Express cardholders, so limiting potential take-up.

According to Channel News Asia, the five banks are responsible for more than 80 per cent of the credit and debit cards issued in Singapore.

Once uses have uploaded their credit or debit cards they can use the iPhone 6s, iPhone 6, iPhone SE and Apple Watch for purchases at approximately 30,000 locations. These include 7 Eleven, M1, Starbucks, StarHub, Topshop and Uniqlo.

Singapore was chosen as the first market in the region – outside of China – to introduce the service. Apple Pay vice president Jennifer Bailey said Singapore got the nod because of local acceptance of contactless, as well as its penetration of debit and credit cards and take up of Apple devices.

Bailey said: “There’s a number of things we look at from a market perspective, as we choose the timing of Apple Pay. The first is, do we have a lot of great iPhone and Apple Watch customers in the market since that is needed in order to use Apple Pay?

“The second is, is the penetration of credit and debit cards,” she continued. “Singapore is a very popular market for credit and debit – over 78 per cent of the customers here prefer to use credit and debit cards over cash.

“And then the third factor is what we call contactless – which is the way the phone actually talks to the terminal to enable Apple Pay. So you have great contactless acceptance in Singapore as well,” said Bailey.

“So all these factors – lots of iPhone customers, lots of contactless, and great credit and debit make it a great market for us.”