A retailer-backed rival to Apple’s Apple Pay mobile wallet will be tested with customers in a handful of stores in the next few weeks, ratcheting up competition in an increasingly cluttered market.

Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) keynote gets underway later today but some of the element of surprise has been ruined. Details about the upcoming iPhone and Apple Pay’s availability in the UK have been leaked.

Any possible sale of either PayPal or EBay will be watched closely in Dublin and Dundalk, where the two employ almost 3,000 staff.

Apple has launched its first smartwatch as well as a new enlarged iPhone, called the iPhone 6 Plus.