Why Bermuda has no Apple Pay and how on‑chain could leapfrog it – The Royal Gazette

Created: Feb 09, 2026 07:33 AM

Andy Mielczarek, chairman and CEO of Bermuda Commercial Bank (File photograph)

Andy Mielczarek, the chief executive of Bermuda Commercial Bank, said Apple Pay had never taken off in Bermuda for a simple reason: the numbers did not add up.

With a population of 60,000 and four banks, there are “not many customers to do the expense of an Apple Pay deployment,” he said.

He called it “quite a lot of investment and not many customers to use it to pay for that investment.”

BCB, which said it already handled about 85 per cent of Bermuda’s digital assets business, also does not offer current accounts or debit cards, so “the reason we don’t offer Apple Pay is the same reason we don’t offer a debit card. We’re a business‑to‑business bank, predominantly”.

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)

By contrast, he argues an on‑chain system, such as the Government-led one announced earlier this month by David Burt at Davos, could deliver Apple‑Pay‑style ease by reusing infrastructure the bank already built for global digital‑asset clients. Switching something like the Shorelink transport app from card checkout to a stablecoin checkout would be “a relatively trivial piece of work”, said Mr Mielczarek, giving users a “one‑touch checkout” experience.

“In a world where we can repurpose what we’ve 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.”

Shorelink, a unified transportation brand for Bermuda’s bus and ferry system, could use stablecoin (Image courtesy of Shorelink website)