Morning Report: Apple Pay Heads to Europe, $20M for (Product) RED, Grids 2.0

Christmas may only be a week away, but you won't have to wait that long to unwrap a trio of Apple-related news items. Our Thursday Morning Report offers a few hints about Apple Pay expansion beyond the U.S., follows up on Cupertino's recent (Product) RED campaign, and delivers a big update for Mac-loving Instagram users. You know the drill: Click and read on!

Job Listing Hints at Apple Pay Expansion into Europe, Middle East

Apple Pay may soon become a lot more ubiquitous, as Apple appears to be eyeing a major expansion beyond the United States. iClarified reported Wednesday that a job posting in London specifically mentions the service will be rolling out "across Europe, Middle East, India and Africa," but offers no details on when that might happen.

"The new London-based Apple Pay team will work to drive the roll-out of this technology across EMEIA by working with a variety of internal and external partners, including teams in the US where the product will first launch and the EMEIA organisation, as well as Issuers, payment networks and merchants across Europe," the job listing reads.

China also appears to be in the crosshairs, with a second posting in search of an "Apple Pay Site Reliability Engineer" responsible for "multiple roles focused on the front line customer experience and the back end integration of Apple systems with our Network and Banking partners."

Apple Holiday Promotion Raised $20M for (Product) RED

Re/code reported Wednesday that Apple's recent holiday campaign appears to have been a smashing success, raising more than $20 million for partner (Product) RED to help fight the spread of AIDS in Africa.

“I’m thrilled to announce that our total donation for this quarter will be more than $20 million — our biggest ever — bringing the total amount Apple has raised for (PRODUCT) RED to over $100 million,” Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote in an email to employees obtained by Re/code. “The money we’ve raised is saving lives and bringing hope to people in need. It’s a cause we can all be proud to support.”

Taking place over a two-week period, Apple's (Product) RED campaign partnered with app developers who donated proceeds to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS. Apple also donated a portion of the company's retail and online sales during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, historically two of the biggest shopping days of the year.

Grids for Instagram 2.0 Adds Multiple Account Support

ThinkTim Creations announced the release of Grids for Instagram 2.0, a major update to the third-party desktop app that delivers photos from the popular social network onto the Mac. Priced at only $0.99, the update now includes support for multiple Instagram accounts with the ability to seamlessly switch between them, three new layout styles, hotkey and gesture support for browsing, navigation, and like/comment actions, and a big performance improvement that promises faster image loading, resizing, and scrolling. The update is free for existing Grids users, and available now from the Mac App Store.

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