Survey: Only 6% of U.S. iPhone Users Who Set Up Apple Pay Actually Use It

[Michael Scrip]

The other day I was ordering at the counter in a Taco Bell in North Carolina, US, and they still had a swipe terminal. It was one of those old touchscreen cash registers where they swipe the card down the side of the screen.

One... it was weird since I hadn't seen anyone swipe a card in years. I thought everyone replaced it with the chip.

And two... my magnetic stripe doesn't work since I carry my Airpods in my front pocket with my wallet. He had to type my card number by hand.

I've deactivated a few hotel keys that way too. Magnets... what fun!

 

[Dahl]

Would love to not carry a wallet. Some holdouts, including the drivers license.

It's maddening that people think Apple Pay is somehow less safe than a credit card or cash. Cash can be lost and used by anyone. Credit cards are easily stolen or ripped. Apple should invest a lot more in advertising and educating about Apple Pay.

I haven't used a wallet in years. I have a case for my ID and one credit card and a $20 under the case. So easy. Agree about the education part, but I think people are very set in their ways, especially about how they pay for things.

 

[Dahl]

Very low indeed. It's a very different story in the UK, it's very very common.

It's my impression that outside USA, paying with your phone is very normal. My son is in Denmark, where EVERYBODY uses their phones to pay and transfer money.

 

[zenodux]

I enjoy using Apple Pay, but there are a few things that Apple needs to do to improve its adoption:

1. Add Face ID support for masks. If I need to wear a mask in a store, then I prefer to use physical credit cards because it's really annoying to wait for Face ID to fail and then unlock my phone with the passcode.

2. Put substantial effort into supporting driver licenses and IDs of all 50 states along with employee IDs, student IDs, gift cards, etc. Make it easy and proactively get organizations on board with this. My physical wallet has a bunch of cards in it and I would prefer not to carry my wallet around, but I still need to carry my wallet around if my iPhone doesn't support even just one of those cards.

3. Improve the wallet UI. If I want to use a credit card other than the one chosen as the default in my iPhone, it's annoying to scroll and find it in the UI. I would prefer a grid UI or something faster to move through.

4. Find a way to support Apple Pay at restaurants and other venues (e.g., gas stations in NJ) where a worker traditionally takes your physical credit card and goes elsewhere to process your transaction.

1 - Apple tweaked FaceID in mid-2020 to fail faster in the presence of a mask. (A more recent tweak lets you unlock your iPhone with your Watch while masked, but this will not allow you to use ApplePay on the iPhone. This has never been an issue for me, since I almost exclusively use my Watch for in-person ApplePay (vs. app or web ApplePay - which I also love - where I use whatever's handiest).

2 - Many campus and mass transit cards are already supported. And as for driver's licenses... https://www.macrumors.com/2021/09/01/apple-shares-us-states-adopting-wallet-ids/

3 - Disagree? On iPhone, Watch, & Mac (native and through iPhone/Watch), the UI is simple, quick, and intuitive. BTW, you can change the default card on each device pretty easily.

4 - US Restaurant payment behavior should change to the way it's done in Europe: the waiter brings a portable terminal (which now supports contactless) to you at your table, so the card/device never leaves your possession. The US behavior is creepy and invites credit card fraud.

 

[jimmysalg]

I stopped carrying my wallet about 8 months ago. The few holdouts that we had for contactless payments enabled it in their machines due to Covid.

I really wish the banks would get their head out of their a*s and remove the tap limit for Apple Pay - it's every bit as secure as chip + pin - no reason for purchase limits (the banks currently limit it to $250 per transaction up here). Vendors/merchants can also have their own limits below that.

Oh - and contactless for the ATMs already - make it happen!!!

In the US Chase bank accepts Apple Pay at the ATM

 

[Nermal]

I don't get it. Apple Pay is way more convenient than paying with a plastic card.

Funny you should say that. Holding my wallet to the reader is quicker/easier than pulling out my phone and entering my PIN (I don't have Touch/Face ID).

I did set up Apple Pay when it first became available, and used it a bit in the first month (my bank had a promotion where you got $10 credit if you used it 10 times) but since then I've pretty much abandoned it.

 

[MisterSavage]

You really need to get an Apple Watch. Nothing marginal about how much more convenient it is to pay with your watch.

Seriously. Instead of "take wallet out of pocket, take card out of wallet, pay with card, put card back in wallet, put wallet back in pocket" I now can do "double tap button on watch and pay with watch".

 

[trip1ex]

The Apple Pay apathy is all because of apps.

I use apps(or web) to order and pay for food nowadays. And I eat out (pick up food) nearly every day.

And then I order stuff for instore/curbside pick up all the time as well. I'm not even pulling out the plastic.

And at Sam's Club I pay for gas at the pump with their app. And scan everything in my cart in store using the app then skip the checkout lines and walk right out the door.

So I think apps have something to do with the low usage.

 

[Somian]

i get better rewards on my other cards for specific purposes.

But you most likely can still use those cards with Apple Pay.

 

[iamfredrik]

The Apple Pay apathy is all because of apps.

I use apps(or web) to order and pay for food nowadays. And I eat out (pick up food) nearly every day.

And then I order stuff for instore/curbside pick up all the time as well. I'm not even pulling out the plastic.

And at Sam's Club I pay for gas at the pump with their app. And scan everything in my cart in store using the app then skip the checkout lines and walk right out the door.

So I think apps have something to do with the low usage.

The apps I have all use Apple Pay to make the payment, so this only applies if the apps use some third party payement service, which I think would be much more inconvenient.

 

[remington79]

Funny you should say that. Holding my wallet to the reader is quicker/easier than pulling out my phone and entering my PIN (I don't have Touch/Face ID).

I did set up Apple Pay when it first became available, and used it a bit in the first month (my bank had a promotion where you got $10 credit if you used it 10 times) but since then I've pretty much abandoned it.

My wallet doesn’t allow you to do that. In fact that’s one of its selling points is that it protects your cards from being able to be scanned.

 

[zenodux]

I was on a 5s when ApplePay was released, so the Watch was my first taste of ApplePay. I have been using it ever since. The Watch is a super-convenient way to use in-person ApplePay. I love it. I've used it at home and around the world.

Interesting tidbit: ApplePay will often work in a country before local card issuers support it. For example, as early as 2016, I was able to widely use my US-based ApplePay cards in Iceland & France.

I favor the the ease, privacy, and security that ApplePay provides. In-person or online - if a company's servers are hacked, my credit card information is not exposed. What a relief.

ApplePay is a signature Apple feature, unlike the iCloud Photos CSAM spying mechanism (all iCloud data should be end-to-end encrypted, with only the owner holding the keys, not Apple) and the ill-conceived Messages Communication Safety sexual content warning/reporting mechanism (which could be abused by parents against LGBTQIA kids, or by pimps against sex workers). Both of these features have been postponed indefinitely by Apple after widespread pushback, but were planned for rollout in iOS 15 and MacOS Monterey after being quietly announced on August 5.

The CDT coalition letter to Apple lays out most of the reasons why the iCloud Photo CSAM scanning & Messages Communication Safety features are terrible.
https://cdt.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/CDT-Coalition-ltr-to-Apple-19-August-2021.pdf.
Check out the recent MacRumors CSAM articles (and the comments) for a more in-depth analysis.

csam Search Results

Apple News and Rumors

www.macrumors.com

 

[echopulse]

I think you might be double pressing too slowly? It requires a fairly deliberate and rapid double click.

Or he has a iPhone with a home button. He needs to something else to bring up apple pay.

 

[dk001]

From my POV, not a surprise.
I use it for online purchases if possible.
In a brick and mortar, it is far easier to use a tap - pay card.

 

[echopulse]

IDK, I like Apple Pay, was an early adopter, used it all the time ... and then, The Age of Plagues began, and I haven't used it once since COVID started, 'cuz it doesn't work without FaceID, which may have something to do with it. It's a lot simpler to just use a contactless card at this point.

It does work without faceid. You try it and it fails, id displays a button to let you put your passcode in. And the pandemic is when you should use Apple Pay even more.

 

[Killbynumbers]

I think in all these years that I have used it only three times and that was to pay my Xfinity bill through their app.

 

[echopulse]

In my experience tap to pay is even easier. Apple pay requires bringing up wallet, selecting card, unlocking phone...and then it doesn't work.

no it doesn't. You hold the phone to the reader and it automatically pulls up default card, tap home button and it's done.

 

[zenodux]

The gas station I normally go to has an NFC reader. And since I have an Apple Watch, it's even better. I simply double press the side button on my AW to authenticate and pump my gas. It's great!

ApplePay works at Costco & Costco Gas! Sadly, I still need to swipe my membership card before tapping to ApplePay. If you get their Costco Citi Visa card, one tap identifies your membership & commences ApplePay. This makes me think they could probably link my non-Costco Visa card to my membership account and do the same thing... but they want to push their card. Woof.

It works at plenty of other gas stations, but Costco has the lowest gas prices in the area. I hope they roll out charging stations with great rates... my next ride will be electric.

 

[echopulse]

That is a fantastic question that I have searched high and low all over the internet and I cannot find an answer to! But for some reason here terminals can be programmed to only accept NFC from a card, or Apple Pay, or google pay, or any combination and pick and choose. Its really bizarre and very frustrating!

no, that's not true. if they take contactless they take apple pay. They can however reject cards from certain networks, like American Express or Discover, but those cards are rejected on both Apple Pay and regular cards.

 

[zenodux]

That explains why just about every time I try to use it, the cashier seems really confused about what they need to do. A lot of fast food places actually support it, but when I go to hang my wrist about the car window and say Apple Pay, please they just don't know what to do. I tell them to pick up the scanner/reader there and hang it out the window and I tap and they seem really confused. At least in most stores I don't have to prompt them, I can just tap my watch to it, but a lot of times they seem amazed by the technology even though it's freaking 2021 and I've been using it since my first Apple Watch in 2015. Six years! Six percent over six years is not good.

The equipment is out there now. I think when most places get new gear or upgrade any of their payment systems it just comes with support by default. But some companies are ridiculous and go out of their way to disable it like Walmart. Considering how many Americans outside of big cities rely on Walmart for basically everything they buy, along with Amazon which also doesn't support it, it's no wonder the percentage isn't higher. Apple needs to work harder to push for a few more of these large breakthrough places to support it or they're just not going to get the large scale adoption if everyone still has to carry a card around. Habits can be hard to break.

You see, the thing with Apple Pay is that it didn't replace anything, it is just another thing to fiddle with on top of everything else. The iPhone straight up replaced your phone entirely. I think the electronic ID stuff is actually a step towards getting more people to use Apple Pay. Once you can replace the wallet entirely, then more people will be on board, and once more people are on board, and it's super convenient, more places will adopt it as their customers clamor for it.

I sometimes got that reaction - particularly when abroad - in 2016, 2017. It's been a long time since any checkout person has been confused about contactless. Some people are still wowed when they see me use my Watch!

 

[echopulse]

Well it's not a technical reason if store XYZ supports contactless cc payments. It's a business reason. I think it's either they are trying to push their own method of digital payment and/or they want to track the shopping habits of users and/or perhaps it is about the revenue share agreement with Apple Pay.

Merchants have no revenue sharing agreements with Apple, and there is no fee for retailers to use Apple Pay. Banks pay the fee.

 

[zenodux]

It's literally the same on the phone. Double press the side button.

Yes! Even better, you can change the order of things and it will still work. But you need to do 3 things in order to complete an in-person iPhone ApplePay transaction at a store (not transit): double-click the side button, authenticate via FaceID or TouchID, and hold the phone near the terminal. If you hold your phone near the terminal, the ApplePay interface automatically appears, but you still need to do the authentication and the double-click.

 

[tmiw]

I don't doubt at all that the US has the world's lowest usage of contactless payment for various reasons. However, 6% seems low; I've heard it's more like 15% or so across all of the various forms. And we only got to that level due to COVID-19, too, which makes the loss of life, etc. even more of a waste.

Anyway, I suspect we're going to move mostly to online or mobile ordering by the time NFC becomes the majority of in person transactions. Why wouldn't we? After all, that means not needing to go in the store in the first place, which saves more time than the 5-10 seconds saved by tapping instead of inserting.

 

[ncc1701d]

Perhaps in North America the concept is new(ish). But in Asia, we've been using similar things to apple pay for a very long time and it's hard to switch habits - where I live so many businesses are already set up for what we've been using since 1997.

 

[lah]

Im surprised usage in the states hasn’t increased since the pandemic. I was sure it would increase.
When I lived in the States it was a hindrance to use Apple Pay. The cashier didn’t know what to do and you ended up holding up the line. But since moving here to Europe I use it all the time. Everywhere, all stores, restaurants, gas stations and even paying toll. Even with a mask I find entering my password faster than pulling out my wallet and inserting the card and entering the chip. The rare time I use cash here is at certain restaurants that have a card minimum.