Apple Pay dominates merchant mindshare for contactless payments, survey finds

A new poll of merchant processing partners has found that Apple Pay is by far the most desired tap-to-pay method, easily exceeding demand for rival services like Android Pay, PayPal and Samsung Pay.

Investment firm Piper Jaffray polled 507 value added resellers and independent software vendors, and found that 44 percent of their point-of-sale merchant customers are already using or have requested more information about NFC payment terminals.

Among those interested in contactless payment solutions, 67 percent of merchants expressed a desire to support Apple Pay. That was by far the most popular option among merchants, the poll found, easily besting second-place finisher Android Pay.

Coming in third with just 8 percent was PayPal, while only 7 percent of merchants expressed a desire to support Samsung Pay.

"We believe it is telling that PayPal, who has been the leader in digital payments, so significantly under-indexed Apple Pay and Android Pay," analyst Gene Munster wrote in a note to investors.

While the survey reflects poorly on PayPal, Munster said it's an encouraging sign not only for Apple, but for digital wallets in general.

Still, he doesn't expect Apple Pay to greatly impact the company's bottom line — Piper Jaffray's estimates call for less than 1 percent of Apple's revenue and earnings in 2017 to be Apple Pay related.

"Apple Pay's significance is an engagement tool, which longer term is a must-have for any successful phone as cash slowly goes away," Munster said.

In the U.S., Apple Pay is supported by more than 1,000 card issuers, and it is accepted at more than 2 million point-of-sale locations. Tap-to-pay support with Apple Pay can be found in the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s series, as well as Apple Watch, and is expected to expand to the new 4-inch "iPhone SE" this month.

26 Comments

jbdragon 2312 comments · 10 Years

About 8 years ago

igorsky said:

Samsung...always left sitting at the dance.

Samesung has been trying to offer it's own services to make money after the sale. The problem is they don't own Android, Google does, and most everyone would rather use Google's services, the Exception seems to be CHINA where they're doing their own thing. Samesung Pay will be yet another loser. Their profits like everyone else building Android phones will continue to drop to nothing. Really the only winner with Android is Google!!! They demand their services front and center and don't care who is making the phones or if they make any money doing it. Google still wins. On the other hand, if all these Merchants are aware of Apple Pay, why aren't merchants supporting NFC and Apple Pay? That's really the biggest issue currently in the U.S. It's lack of support. Most of the banks are now on board. Everyone is waiting for the ability to use it everywhere now and these same merchants are dragging their feet.

mike1 3431 comments · 10 Years

About 8 years ago

Was pleasantly surprised to find that a local Mom and Pop grocery store that I shop at regularly installed a new POS system that accepted tap-to-pay from my phone. There was no Apple Pay logo on the terminal but it went through fine and I didn't need to enter a PIN for my debit card. :-)

studiomusic 654 comments · 17 Years

About 8 years ago

My local store just changed out all of their POS systems with ones that don't accept any wireless payments. They said the wireless part was messing up the other parts. Sure.

lkrupp 10521 comments · 19 Years

About 8 years ago

Just more evidence that iOS owners actually use their devices compared to the competition. iOS dominates web traffic, app purchases, now NFC payments. Even though iOS has a “paltry” ~14% market share worldwide it still grabs the most profit, the most sophisticated and affluent users, app developers who release iOS first and Android later or never. I vividly remember the debut of Apple Pay. The usual suspects here pounced upon the fact that Google Wallet had been around “for years” before Apple Pay. Trouble was most Android users had no clue it existed let alone used it. It took Apple Pay for NFC to get any traction with the general public. It always takes Apple for any new technology to get traction with the masses. Techies live in their closed little universes completely isolated from the real world and how real people use technology.