Apple Pay accepted at more than 2M locations, coming to Chick-fil-A, other stores soon

According to a report from Bloomberg, published by The Business Times, Apple's in-house payments initiative is developing as planned after the company blew past internal goals to roll out compatibility at 1.5 million retail outlets by the end of 2015.

Aside from currently existing deployments, big chains like Crate & Barrel, Chick-fil-A and Au Bon Pain have plans to integrate Apple Pay as a checkout option in the near future. Additionally, online merchants are flipping the switch on in-app payments, like Zappos.com did on Tuesday.

"We've been getting requests from customers to use Apple Pay for quite a while," said Zappos' mobile chief Aki Iida. "It makes the customer experience easier, why not try it?"

Not a highly touted feature, in-app payment integration is on the rise, Apple said. The company noted purchase volume more than doubled in the trailing half of 2015 compared to the first six months of the year, the report said.

Apple Pay is considered a young product in the payments space. As such, both merchants and consumers are reluctant to commit when traditional offerings remain widely available. The company is still investigating how best to boost adoption in the U.S., a culture that has not yet evolved past swipe credit card transactions.

Apple intends to expand Apple Pay into China as part of a partnership with card processor Union Pay, a region of massive growth potential both for payments and the company's hardware. Last month, touchless Apple Pay transactions were reportedly working in some areas ahead of an official launch.