Apple Pay may not be shaking up the mobile payments space as much as Apple had hoped yet. Research done by Reuters found that Apple’s forecast to have about half of the top 100 merchants in the U.S. accept Apple pay this year may have been a bit too optimistic.
Forrester Research’s Sucharita Mulpuru says, “One of the things that does concern me is that, usually, for these types of releases, it’s often hyper growth from the get-go, and the fact that it’s a little more conservative, leads me to think that, you know, it’s probably not going to accelerate that much more.
And Apple pay hasn’t been a home run with consumers.
A survey released in March by shopper insight firm InfoScout and PYMNTS.com of more than 1,000 iPhone6 users found that, while 15 percent of them had tried the payment system, only six percent said they continued to use it.
And Merchants have been saying “no, thank you” for a number of reasons, including the fact that their customers simply aren’t demanding it.
Apple isn’t giving Merchants much value add like info on the customers. Many of the top retailers already signed on with CurrentC, a new mobile payment system to be launched by a coalition of retailers, and are locked in.
And Apple pay also requires a technology upgrade, an investment many retailers aren’t keen to make.
“It’s unclear what apple is doing for the merchants. They haven’t proven that they can drive incrementally. It’s not that they can drive new customers. It’s not even proven that it’s necessary, you know, all it is, is shifting your payment from a credit card to an Apple Pay payment, which, by the way, there is now another player in the ecosystem that is demanding a tax on, you know, kind of using them as part of the payment structure.”
To be fair, Apple Pay has gotten some traction in signing up vendors, with more than 700,000 sites as of March 9th, the last time Apple updated its number, including self-service terminals, such as vending machines, laundromats and parking meters.
Ventuno