KUWAIT CITY, Nov 27: According to informed sources, five local banks, including three conventional and two operating according to Islamic law, are ready to activate "Apple Pay" for their customers on the expected service activation day in Kuwait - December 6, reports Al-Rai daily.

They explained that all Kuwaiti banks will not be able to activate the service on the launch day at once. It is likely that the banking ability to support the service for customers will be limited to the five banks that are prepared for that in their systems, while each bank that is unable to activate on the launch day will be able to activate the service as soon as its systems are configured to support cards issued by the bank so as to participate in Apple Pay payments.

The “Apple Pay'' service will include credit cards, debit cards, and major prepaid cards, specifically those related to salary as well as Visa and MasterCard.

Supporting all bank accounts and linking them to the service will be based on the policy of each bank, as it may decide to activate it for the accounts of the main cards and not the private ones targeting a specific segment of customers.

The spread of “Apple Pay” does not mean displacing the network of the Shared Electronic Banking Company (KNet), as it stated that enabling “Apple Pay” needs to enable the company’s platforms either for points of sale or e-commerce.

The majority of point-of-sale devices in the market are ready for “Apple Pay” transactions supported by the “NFC” feature for debit and credit cards without any change. Incompatible points of sale devices will be replaced.