{"id":328430,"date":"2026-02-09T16:35:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T16:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/328430\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T16:35:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T16:35:09","slug":"why-bermuda-has-no-apple-pay-and-how-on-chain-could-leapfrog-it-the-royal-gazette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/328430\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Bermuda has no Apple Pay and how on\u2011chain could leapfrog it &#8211; The Royal Gazette"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Created: Feb 09, 2026 07:33 AM<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1770654909_764_.jpeg\" uuid=\"6dfcc19c-72a9-5fff-80df-5a8f73936958\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Andy Mielczarek, chairman and CEO of Bermuda Commercial Bank (File photograph)<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__body\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.royalgazette.com\/banking\/business\/article\/20260206\/bank-backs-government-plan-for-an-onchain-economy\/\" id=\"link-58a2764e04044af30a2ccc0fcc05e7d5\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"bank onchain\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Andy Mielczarek, the chief executive of Bermuda Commercial Bank<\/a>, said Apple Pay had never taken off in Bermuda for a simple reason: the numbers did not add up.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__body\">With a population of 60,000 and four banks, there are \u201cnot many customers to do the expense of an Apple Pay deployment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__body\">He called it \u201cquite a lot of investment and not many customers to use it to pay for that investment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__body\">BCB, which said it already handled about 85 per cent of Bermuda\u2019s digital assets business, also does not offer current accounts or debit cards, so \u201cthe reason we don\u2019t offer Apple Pay is the same reason we don\u2019t offer a debit card. We\u2019re a business\u2011to\u2011business bank, predominantly\u201d.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1770654909_969_.jpeg\" uuid=\"27e8f490-2c10-59c8-8cef-59aa0d8d9295\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Jennifer Bailey, Vice President of Apple Pay, speaks about the Apple Card at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California in 2019 (File photograph by Tony Avelar\/AP)<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__body\">By contrast, he argues an on\u2011chain system, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.royalgazette.com\/economy\/business\/article\/20260120\/bermuda-aims-to-be-worlds-first-onchain-economy\/\" id=\"link-84c7c19b9b433367cc578c8b2845a726\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"davos\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">such as the Government-led one announced earlier this month by David Burt at Davos<\/a>, could deliver Apple\u2011Pay\u2011style ease by reusing infrastructure the bank already built for global digital\u2011asset clients. Switching something like the Shorelink transport app from card checkout to a stablecoin checkout would be \u201ca relatively trivial piece of work\u201d, said Mr Mielczarek, giving users a \u201cone\u2011touch checkout\u201d experience.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__body\">\u201cIn a world where we can repurpose what we\u2019ve already built for our corporate customers and the wallet providers can do the same, you can get something almost as convenient as the Apple Pay proposition but for much less money.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1770654909_175_.jpeg\" uuid=\"3a8966f5-2979-5f32-af52-f4e79a74ed4f\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Shorelink, a unified transportation brand for Bermuda\u2019s bus and ferry system, could use stablecoin (Image courtesy of Shorelink website)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Created: Feb 09, 2026 07:33 AM Andy Mielczarek, chairman and CEO of Bermuda Commercial Bank (File photograph) Andy&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328431,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[257],"tags":[8139,157597,10119,19175,18,19,17,279,82],"class_list":["post-328430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-banking","tag-bermuda-commercial-bank","tag-cryptocurrencies","tag-david-burt","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-mobile","tag-technology"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116041647687018188","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}