A new survey from PYMENTS.com today suggests that just 6% of iPhone owners in the United States opt to use Apple Pay in stores, despite having the feature set up on their device. The survey shows that “93.9% of consumers with Apple Pay activated on their iPhones do not use it in-store to pay for purchases.”
The data is based on a national study conducted by PYMENTS with 3,671 consumers in the United States. One interesting tidbit in the data is that mobile wallet usage declined amid the COVID-19 pandemic:
We asked people what payment methods they used to pay in the last 24 hours when shopping in a store and compared it to the same data captured in prior studies. We observe that between 2019 and 2021 cash use declined 20.1%; credit card use increased by 33.8%; and debit card use declined slightly by 7.2%.
Mobile wallet use in-store declined 26.2%.
That said, Apple Pay usage in store, to its credit, has remained steady, though small, while the other mobile wallets have shriveled. Most of the decline of the mobile wallet use in 2021 is related to the decline in use of the other “Pays” in store.
It is important to remember that this survey solely focuses on the United States, where retailers and banks have been slower to make the switch to contactless payment technology. Apple Pay likely has higher adoption numbers in other countries where that switch happened at a much faster rate.
Apple heavily touts that Apple Pay includes a handful of benefits and is now accepted at over 85% of retailers in the United States. Apple says that Apple Pay is:
- Faster and easier than using cards or cash.
- Accepted at over 85 percent of retailers in the U.S.
- Safer than touching buttons and exchanging cash.
- Privacy and security built in.
The full report from PYMENTS is worth a read and includes interesting data points on other forms of payments being used by shoppers in stores.
Author: Chance Miller
Source: 9TO5Google
