Apple Watch to be available in 9 countries on April 24, 2015

Following Apples “Spring Forward” event, officials have demonstrated the soon to be available Apple Watch, which will enable, among others, Apple Pay mobile payments. Kevin Lynch, Apple’s VP of Technology, has showed attendees how Apple Pay works at a store, using a handheld merchant terminal. When consumers are in a store and getting ready to pay at a location that accepts Apple Pay, they can move their watch toward the payment terminal. Apple Pay will automatically open on their watch’s display, and they will be able to complete the transaction as they would on an iPhone 6.

The Apple Watch will open up Apple Pay to a new group of iPhone users, which could propel consumer uptake. The Apple Watch will expand Apple Pay availability to iPhone 5, 5c and 5s devices running iOS 8 or later that act as companion devices for the Watch. Its still unclear how cards would be loaded and how tokenized payment information would be transmitted to the Apple Watch since the iPhone 5 does not currently have a way to set up Apple Pay accounts.

If iPhone 5 users can in fact use Apple Pay via the Apple Watch, Apple Pay will expand its addressable audience by 200 million people globally, however, thus far only US customers can transact with Apple Pay, meaning the Apple Pay-addressable audience would be lower, but still significant. And of course, the actual number of people who adopt the Apple Watch and Apple Pay will be much lower.