Dive Brief:
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About 13% of the estimated 680 million iPhones in active use have activated Apple Pay, and 31 retailers on the Internet Retailer 100 now accept Apple Pay, according to new research from venture capital firm Loup Ventures.
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Among other stats revealed by Loup, about 53% of retailers listed as “coming soon in browsers” have launched Apple Pay in the first six months after that message was posted. Loup also broke down adoption by format, saying 44 retailers in the Internet Retailer 100 have adopted Apple Pay at point of sale; 40 of the same group have adopted Apple Pay in-app; 13% have adopted it in mobile browsers; and nine have adopted Apple Pay in desktop browsers.
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Meanwhile, 2,091 banks accept Apple Pay globally, up from 1,439 in July of 2016, and an estimated 30% of new iPhones are having Apple Pay activated on them.
Dive Insight:
Loup Ventures' study comes after another recent bit of research from PYMNTS.com that didn't paint a very bright picture for mobile payments overall, suggesting consumer adoption of the major mobile wallets had become sluggish at best, and had completely stalled at worst. Apple Pay came out of that study looking better than the major mobile wallet players, and these new numbers from Loup relay a more encouraging story for Apple Pay growth. Even so, adoption is not the same thing as usage, and Loup admitted it didn't have any details on usage trends.
Aside from the consumer numbers, Loup's retailer adoption figures also are encouraging, though perhaps difficult to put in perspective. As Loup noted, there are four potential payment points at which Apple Pay can be accepted by most retailers — at in-store point-of-sale, in-app, through a mobile browser or through the Safari desktop browser. It is not surprising to see the highest percentage or retailer acceptance at in-store POS and in-app because those are the formats in which it has been available longest. Retailers, meanwhile, have had the opportunity to accept Apple Pay on their regular websites through Safari only since last year. So, while nine of the Internet Retailer 100 accepting Apple Pay in-browser may seem like a low number, all of those have come on board in less than a year.
Loup also noted that Apple Pay has been adopted at 22% of all possible payment points available in the Internet Retailer 100. It compiled that figure by figuring out that are a maximum of 316 Apple Pay adoption points within the Internet Retail 100 (not all those retailers have physical stores and not all of them have apps.) The 22% figure means Apple Pay has been adopted at 71 of the 316 possible points of adoption. Loup doesn't know how that percentage has grown recently because this is the first time it has calculated it, but one clear thing you can say about 22% is that while it's not bad, it leaves a lot of room for growth.
