CIMB Malaysia is already working to enable Apple Pay for its customers. As you may have heard, Apple Pay made its official debut in Malaysia last week with three banks but CIMB which is one of the biggest banks in the country is somehow not part of the initial list.
However, it is going to be a while before CIMB customers are able to add their cards to Apple Pay. Under its current plan, the support for Apple Pay will come sometime in the second half of 2023 according to Ros Yusoff, the Group Chief Technology & Data Officer for CIMB Malaysia.
At the moment, CIMB is putting more focus on its mobile app especially now that it has just rolled out the new CIMB OCTO App. Even though the app is still in its infancy and users are advised not to delete the existing CIMB Clicks app from their phone just yet, the bank intends to further update the app in months to come with new features and refinements based on customers’ feedback.
It is indeed a compelling reason given how 8 out of 10 CIMB digital customers are mobile users, according to the statistics shown in the media preview of the OCTO App earlier today. Furthermore, the bank also noted that it will only launch the web version of OCTO towards the end of 2023 once the mobile app is deemed matured enough which again highlight its commitment to mobile users.
Then again, some may point out that CIMB already supported Samsung Pay for quite some time. Hence, it can be argued that the bank should not take that long to deploy the Apple Pay support to its customers given its years of experience with Samsung Pay.
All in all, it seemed that CIMB Malaysia’s priority is clearly towards the mobile app users. For now, the support for Apple Pay continues to be limited to selected credit and debit cards from Maybank, AmBank, and Standard Chartered.
