Apple Pay ranks as fifth most common payment platform on most popular websites

Apple has 0.25 percent of the top 10,000 websites, according to analytics firm SimilarTech. Apple Pay is supported on 1,035 sites in total, having only reached the Web in September with iOS 10 and macOS Sierra.

Within those 10,000 sites, Apple is ahead of companies like Amazon and Google, but still well behind industry leader PayPal, which controls the top two spots — one with its standard payment services (2.36 percent) and the other via the PayPal "Subscribe" button (0.98 percent). Stripe and Braintree round out the top five.

The same rankings continue to play out when expanding the view to the top 100,000 websites, even though Apple's share shrinks to just 0.11 percent. Among all websites, Apple is in just 27th place.

SimilarTech's marketing director, Daniel Buchuk, commented however that Apple has seen a "meteoric rise," given the difficulty of getting sites to adopt payment platforms and the years its competitors have had to establish themselves.

The company is likely to continue expanding Apple Pay's footprint, in part because its new MacBook Pro has a Touch ID sensor built-in, simplifying authentication. Apple is also promoting its Web partners, which might encourage other parties to sign on.