Apple Pay is gaining steam, just months after launch, with the company revealing to the NYT that it now supports cards from providers that make up 90 percent of the credit card purchases made in the U.S. In addition to ten new banks that are coming on board today, It’s now accepted in more places than ever before, with Staples, Winn-Dixie, Albertson and the Amway Center turning on support in the latest wave.
And people are actually using it, too: McDonald’s has said that 50 percent of its NFC-based tap payments are already Apple Pay as of November, which is huge considering how much of a head start other programs had in terms of seeding customers and advocating their alternatives.
50 percent of tap-to-pay transactions, even at a large-scale national chain like McDonald’s, still doesn’t amount to a huge number of payments relative to the general pool; cash and traditional card-based payments still greatly outweigh any and all mobile payment initiatives, Apple Pay included. Apple’s mobile payments system is still by far the most successful individual initiative we’ve seen in the field so far, and this new program expansion means it’s already leaving competitors scrambling.
One such newcomer competitor may be Samsung, which is in talks to launch an Apple Pay-style payments mechanism of its own according to Re/code. That Samsung would ever copy something Apple had done first is completely preposterous of course, so I’m sure they would never, ever, never be building a mobile payments solution (longest eye-roll of all time).
Regardless of who else throws their hat in the ring, it looks likely at this stage that Apple Pay will be the prime mover in terms of mobile payments industry growth over the next few years.
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