UPDATE
Apple Pay Octopus launched June 2, 2020, older obsolete Octopus related separate posts from December 2018~March 2019 have been merged here.
Apple Pay Octopus was announced in July as ‘coming soon’ with no official indication from Octopus Cards Limited when coming soon would happen. Today is the last day of November, on December 1 an updated Octopus Schedule and Fees Guideline went into effect. From December 1 all Octopus issue switched over to a new 3,000 HKD stored value limit and users can upgrade older cards to the new limit:
Starting from 1 December 2019, the stored value limit of all newly issued Octopus products – including On-Loan Octopus, Sold Octopus, Bank Co-Brand Octopus, Smart Octopus and Octopus Mobile SIM etc., will be HK$3,000.
From a technical standpoint it makes sense to host a new service when the system is ready to automatically upgrade older physical Octopus cards to the new stored value limit when transferred to smartphones. However, I seriously doubt the new stored value limit is a factor in the Apple Pay Octopus launch delay. The protests in Hong Kong that started just before the OCL July announcement are a much bigger factor. I suspect the protests were also a factor in OCL suspending Smart Octopus in Samsung Pay services without any explanation.
The Apple Pay Octopus launch has been on a long damn winding road since beta testing started a year ago. The clock is ticking, if a launch doesn’t come in the next 2 weeks or so, Apple Pay Octopus is a no show for 2019. My take is it will happen in 2020.
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