The release of iOS 10.1 has brought with it support for Apple Pay in Japan, one of Apple’s largest markets and a country where mobile payments have been commonplace for well over a decade. The expansion into Japan required significant work from Apple to get its payment system working on the existing infrastructure.

In Japan, Apple Pay is actually more like two systems. There’s the system that works like it does everywhere else, where you add a card from a supported bank and pay at the register by authenticating your fingerprint with Touch ID. But Japan is still a largely cash-based society when it comes to typical store payments — many places don’t take credit cards at all. It’s the second system that will prove more useful for most…

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