Apple Pay Statistics Examining the Mobile Wallet’s Popularity

The global pandemic and the shift to digital purchases helped Apple Pay grow its user base by nearly 15% — from 441 million in 2019 to 507 million in 2020. Ever since 2016, one year after its launch, the service has been steadily adding new users. Back then, it only had 67 million users worldwide, meaning its global user base grew by 656.7% over just four years.

(Statista)

Experts predict 45.4 million Americans will use the payment service by 2022, translating to 16.2% of the country’s population. Its penetration will continue growing, albeit at a relatively slow pace over the next four years. Thanks to Apple’s high brand loyalty rates, the service will reach 56.7 million Americans (19.7% of the population) by 2026 — a 25% increase over four years.

(eMarketer)

Even though mobile wallets only made for 5.8% of all in-store transactions in 2022’s second quarter, Apple Pay still managed to gain a significant lead over its competitors. At 48%, it is currently far ahead of second-placed Google Pay (17%). For every dollar customers spent in-store during Q2 of 2022, 3.1 cents came through Apple Pay. This means Apple Pay was responsible for $199 billion of eligible retailers’ total quarterly sales of $4.9 trillion.

(PYMNTS)

Apple Pay’s offline penetration rate is highest in the United Kingdom, followed by Canada (57%), the United States (56%), France (54%), and Austria (51%). As for its online use, the US and the UK share the first place, with 27% of all digital shoppers using this payment service. The rest of the top five includes Canada (22%), Sweden (20%), and Switzerland (20%).

(Statista)

The tech giant keeps this service’s revenue data under wraps, but experts estimated Apple Pay’s 2019 earnings at $988 million. This was just 1.2% of the company’s combined annual revenue of $80 billion from the services it provides. Still, the recent shift to contactless payment should help push this number to $6 billion by 2023 — an impressive 507% increase over 2019.

(Statista, Bloomberg)

Retail companies are the most numerous, with 17,981 (26%) currently accepting Apple Pay. Other leading sectors include fashion and clothing (5,136 companies), manufacturing (4,771), food and beverages (3,605), health and fitness (1,721), beauty and cosmetics (1,332), wholesale (1,321), restaurants (1,121), automotive (1,059), and design (1,027).

(Enlyft)

With 39,781 US businesses accepting Apple Pay as a payment method, the US is firmly in the lead. Other countries with high Apple Pay acceptance numbers include the UK (6,368), Canada (4,941), Australia (3,585), and Germany (1,035). The rest of the top 10 countries are all below the 1,000-companies threshold, including Singapore (640), the Netherlands (566), New Zealand (481), France (475), and Spain (365).

(Enlyft)

Similar to companies, the Apple Pay adoption rate is the highest among websites registered and hosted in the US. Namely, there are currently 212,389 sites there that accept Apple Pay. The rest of the top five comprises the UK (43,340 websites), Canada (29,064), Australia (26,643), and Germany (24,898). Although the numbers for other countries seem small, it’s worth noting that the US has 130.4 million websites — nearly 11 times as many as Germany.

(SimilarTech, RegistrarOwl)

According to the latest available data, the number of banks supporting Apple Pay has seen massive growth over the last few years. In 2017, there were just 1,922 such banks and credit unions in the country. The number went up by 41% to 2,707 in 2018, only to rise by another 57% in 2019, reaching 4,250. On the whole, over just three years, the number of US banks and credit unions that support Apple Pay went up by an impressive 185.1%.

(Loup Funds)

In 2015, shortly after the service launched, only 11.6% of the smartphones were compatible with it. This share has increased every year since, mostly thanks to the rising popularity and the ever-growing market penetration of Apple’s iPhone. Of all the smartphones currently in use, 86.7% support mobile wallets. This means Apple Pay is only available on about half of those.

(PYMNTS)

According to a 2021 survey, a staggering 93.9% of those who have an iPhone with Apple Pay installed and activated said they don’t use the service. In 2015, a year after the service launched in the US, 5.1% of iPhone owners used it. This means that Apple Pay usage among US iPhone owners increased by just one percentage point over the subsequent six years.

(MacRumors)

Industry insiders predict Apple Pay could increase its share in global card payments to 10% as soon as 2025. In light of plateauing sales of the iPhone, they believe the tech giant could shift its focus to its services division, of which Apple Pay is an integral part. The service makes its money by taking a tiny percentage of each transaction. With the contactless payment market set to reach $1.5 trillion in transactions by 2024, there’s plenty of room for Apple Pay to grow.

(Quartz)

This number denotes all transactions where the service could have been used as a payment method. However, according to research, customers used Apple Pay in only 6.1% of the cases. Although seemingly small, this still translates to about $91.7 billion spent in-store using Apple Pay as a payment method. It also marked a 96% increase from $46.9 billion in 2019.

(PYMNTS)

Dominated by the global pandemic, 2020 was the most successful year in Apple Pay’s history thus far. Not only did this number mark an impressive increase from 51% the year before, but Apple Pay also managed to leave its main competitors — Samsung Pay (5%) and Google Pay (3%) — far behind. One of the key reasons for Apple Pay’s success was its integration with popular mobile apps, as 57% of transactions recorded that year came from in-app purchases.

(AppleInsider)

A 2021 survey found that 1.7% of purchases participants had made in the previous 24 hours were paid for using Apple Pay. Although the number of Apple Pay users makes for a relatively small portion of total in-store purchases, it still fared much better than the competitors. During the same 24-hour period, PayPal was used in 0.9% of in-store purchases. Google Pay and Samsung Pay were in joint third place (0.4% each), with Walmart Pay in fourth (0.2%).

(PYMNTS)

The same survey reveals that 66.7% of US consumers paid for groceries using Apple Pay. But the data for Apple Pay suggests that customers use it for a variety of products and services. As such, 20.3% said they used it to buy fast food, 24.1% bought clothing and accessories with it, 9.2% paid for health-related products, and 12.7% bought gas using Apple Pay. People also used Apple Pay to order food (7.1%), buy books (8.3%), and purchase furniture (12.6%).

(PYMNTS)

This puts the service on equal ground with Google Pay, which 39% of US consumers also haven’t heard of. PayPal is the most well-known of all mobile wallet apps, with just 22% of Americans who have never heard of it. At the same time, 41% say they’ve never heard of Venmo, 48% are unaware of Zelle, and 50% haven’t heard of CashApp.

(Statista)

Apple Pay took over the lead from Venmo, largely due to the fact that 87% of US teens own an iPhone. As for monthly users, the number for Apple Pay stood at 23% — enough to leave the competitors like Venmo (#2), CashApp (#3), and PayPal (#4) behind. Apple Pay only lags in the “buy now, pay later” area, where PayPal is currently in the lead. However, the recent launch of the “Apple Pay Later” feature with a 0% interest rate may help change this very soon.

(Yahoo! Finance)

Although the service’s user base is still growing, Apple Pay is most popular among younger consumers. On that note, a survey conducted in 2020 found that nearly three-quarters (73.1%) of Gen-Zers who had Apple Pay installed on their phones used it for in-app purchases. The same was true for 52% of millennials and 52% of Gen-Xers, Apple Pay stats reveal.

(PYMNTS)

As one of the very few foreign companies with access to the Chinese market, Apple Pay has already established itself as an important player in the world’s most populous country. According to research, Apple Pay is currently the sixth most popular mobile wallet app in China, with 19% of the country’s online shoppers using it. The top five comprises exclusively Chinese services — AliPay (93%), WeChat Pay (86%), UnionPay (43%), JDPay (24%), and Tenpay (20%).

(Statista)