A consumer survey on U.S. mobile payments released by First Annapolis Consulting, Inc. found that while awareness of Apple Pay is high, the usage rates of the service are not.
Of the 580 iPhone 6 users interviewed 20 percent reported adopting Apple Pay (i.e., having used the service at least once), down from 22 percent in the Spring survey.
Among those that have adopted Apple Pay, only 15 percent say they use it regularly or frequently (i.e., more than once per month), compared to 19 percent in the Spring survey. On average, Apple Pay users have loaded 2.3 cards into their Apple Wallet; 75 percent of cards loaded were general-purpose payment cards (41 percent credit, 30 percent debit, 4 percent prepaid), while 25 percent were proprietary retail store or loyalty cards which Apple began enabling only in the second half of 2015.
Although there is an adoption plateau, awareness of Apple Pay is quite high. Among all survey respondents (approximately 1,300), 73 percent have heard of Apple Pay, while awareness jumps up to 84 percent for the sub-group of iPhone 6 owners. Hugh Gallagher, a Principal at First Annapolis, said in a press release, “High awareness is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the success of a new payment service such as Apple Pay.”
“These research results demonstrate that Apple Pay has had a moderately successful launch, with low consumer usage but positive customer experiences to date. The latter represents an important first step towards longer-term adoption. While early adoption of Apple Pay may not be as high as expected -- and appears to have plateaued since the initial launch in October, 2014 -- usage is likely to continue to increase with the proliferation of other mobile payment solutions (e.g., Android Pay, Samsung Pay, CurrentC, Chase Pay, etc.) which should expand the merchant acceptance base and broaden the availability and visibility of mobile payments in general,” Gallagher concluded.
