Only 20% of people who can use Apple Pay have done so

That's a weird way to phrase what's going on..

    Of the 20% who had [used Apple Pay], most (56%)
    only used it about once a week.

So something like 11% of iPhone 6/6s owners use Apple Pay every week? There's something like 30 million phones in that category in the US, so maybe 3 million people use Apple Pay every week. That's "hardly anyone"?

As more and more phones gain capability with the upgrade cycle and as more vendors install contactless terminals, Apple Pay (and Samsung / Android Pay) are going to grow like crazy. Is there a company on earth who would be disappointed with 3 million weekly users, especially when they get a cut of each transaction?

The trouble is retailers. I'd use it everywhere if people would support contactless payments. It's how I pay at Sprouts every time.

Heck, Kroger has new terminals that should support contactless payments AND chip based payments, but neither work. Same with my liquor store. Same with IKEA. At IKEA the terminal has a card slot but also has a note taped to it saying "please swipe". At the other two the slot simply does nothing.

But it's more fun to blame Apple and "apathy" than how broken payments are in the US.

I think there's still too much social friction. It's really convenient and fast most of the time, but there are several road blocks that I've run in to that made me wish I just swiped my card. Most of these will go away with time.

1. Their hardware doesn't support RFID, or it has a RFID logo but is disabled.

2. The store owner doesn't know how it works, or is concerned and thinks it didn't work because they're unfamiliar with it.

3. The store owner or people in line think its cool, haven't seen it before, and want a demo.

4. The store owner or people in line act like I'm a techno-douche and don't understand why I didn't just swipe a card like a normal person because I'm holding everybody up trying to make it work with their busted RFID reader.

When none of those things happen, it's a great experience, especially on the watch.

I love the convenience of Apple Pay, but most vendors don't have it. Pretty much the only place that I've used it regularly is Wegmans, but if I'm buying beer I have to show my ID and at that point I may as well pay with my card.

I like Apple Pay, I really do, but there's hardly enough vendor adoption. Hard to see where the blame lies, aside from the obvious chicken-and-egg problem.

I actually wonder if there will be a different ratio in EU countries which are far more accustomed to both contactless chip & pin payments and where cash transactions are much less common e.g. almost everyone pays even for small things like coffee using a card rather than cash.

Sure when you calculate the amount of money transferred cards are the king even in the US but in overall number of transactions and especially in low value (under 50$) the picture changes and the lower you go the more likely you will pay with Cash. In Europe the picture is quite different as debit, credit, and local chip & pin wallets remain dominant both in high and low value transactions.

On the anecdotal side I went through my bank statements online and I withdrew cash only 6 times this year in the UK for a total sum of 270 GBP which is nothing. I rarely use cash the only time I use cash is if i go to a festival or a street market or something similar.

The headline is "Hardly Anyone Is Using Apple Pay", but the first sentence of the actual article is "Only 20% of people who can use Apple Pay have done so." That sounds...pretty freaking good? I think of Apple Pay as being mildly successful given how hard it's been for competing systems to get any traction over the last 5 years or so, but I would have guessed that that number was more like 10%.

I also consider Android Pay to be mildly successful, but AFAIK it has about the same level (or less?) of popularity and support. It's just fundamentally not the kind of service where the criteria for success is defined by adoption by a plurality of compatible device owners.

All of these different payment systems are just struggling to gain traction- over the next couple of years, I would consider "success" for any of them to just be getting enough growth and support to stay alive. Once the market has decided that one or more of these systems gets to stick around long-term, then we can start being disappointed that only a few tens of millions of people are using them.

I've only had luck with Apple Pay in Trader Joe's and Panera so far. Discover is doing 10% cash back for payments made in Apple Pay until the end of the year so I've been trying hard to find any stores that accepts it, but couldn't find that many places. If it were accepted by more retailers (e.g. CVS, Stars Market), I can see it being more widely used.

By the way, I remember Target, CVS, and some other retailers were working on their own payment system using QR code. I wonder what happened to it.

Another issue is the lack of participating banks. All of my credit cards work with Apple Pay (and I use it multiple times a week) but all of my parents' cards and a bunch of my friends' cards are simply not supported.

I like Apple Pay, but with EMV rolling out in the US and the CurrentC consortium trying to kill credit card use in the retail space entirely I don't know whether it's ever going to be able to reach wide-spread adoption.

I use Apple Pay regularly at Trader Joe's, Peet's Coffee, Whole Foods, Walgreens, and various other places. Success rate is 100% at most of those stores. For Walgreens, implementation is still rather spotty; works great at some stores, others have had broken readers or have said that their new readers were coming soon, but not there yet.

It's especially handy for occasions when I'd rather not bring my wallet, such as workouts.

I have tried to use Apple Pay on my iWatch about 12 times at retailers that have stickers which say "Apple Pay Accepted Here". It has worked 2 times. Just didn't work at all 7 times. 3 times it actually broke the POS system on the register and they had to move me to another register. I just can't be bothered to use it anymore. I just look like an idiot trying.

I like paying with it, from how the protocol was designed i feel like its less likely to have my credit card info leaked. I find that the biggest issue when paying is that the POS system is on its own mission (fucking hate that weight system (plz return your item to the bagging area)). So i might have to try to complete the payment multiple times before it submits.....

I don't see any advantage to it vs. a card with a chip. The card has no battery, is more durable, and can be replaced for free.

More accurately, hardly anyone is offering it consistently.

I would love to use Apple Pay everywhere but it's simply not really available. For instance everytime I go to get gas I'd love to but no gas stations appear to support it. I go to Starbucks several times a week and use their app to pay but no option to use native apple pay (only as a payment source). Subway is suppose to offer it but the ones near me don't. A few stores that are suppose to, I've tried but the register person didn't click the right button and ended up crashing the system and had to use a card. Some stores say they support NFC but specifically block Apple Pay for competitive reasons.

Whole Foods is pretty much the only place I know I can use it and have it work. So I think it comes down to waiting for major players to start offering it like gas stations and starbucks so that people will be able to use it consistently in their daily lives.

I tend to use it when possible. Aside from cashiers at Whole Foods, I have gotten a surprised reaction of "I didn't know you could do that!" from most of the places that I've used it.

Only Game Stop asked for ID to go along with the Apple Pay. I tend to think that an additional id is not really necessary.

Until last week, I had an iPhone 5S and an Apple Watch, which is also a combination that works for paying with Apple Pay. I tried several places that claimed to support it, and it didn't appear to work. It took me several months to realize that I had to have the "Wallet" app open on the watch and had to double-click the side button to put the watch in the mode where it's ready to pay. Then you have to get it close to the terminal to work. I bet half the problem is that users don't know the interface for making a payment. My memory of the keynote where this was introduced was that you just held the watch up to the terminal and it paid. That's not the reality of how it works. And cashiers generally don't know how it works, so they can't help you.

I'm having the similar troubles with terminals that only allow chip and signature or terminals that have a chip slot but only allow swiping.

I've found that if you read carefully it will tell you whether to "insert" or "swipe" your card...old habits die hard.

This is what happens, I try Apple Pay, a lot of times it doesn't work. Pull my card out and insert it. Also doesn't work. Finally I swipe the damn thing and ta-da back to normal.

I almost wish Apple would use geofencing to let us know if the retailer supports Apple Pay or not so I can quickly abort the mission ahead of time.

I saw someone awkwardly trying to use their Apple watch to pay for something the other day. It was kind of funny.

I wonder what the numbers would be like in the UK, where contactless payment is already fairly widespread...

It's definitely my preferred method of payment. Retailers who don't use NFC related tech like Apple/Google Pay are the last ones to get my dollars.

A friend of mine and I were just talking about Apple/Google Pay this morning and she said it was a lifesaver when she forgot her wallet. I think for most people this is how they will end up using their Apple/Google Pay at first. Then they will claim it's the most amazing thing ever as my friend told me this morning when she went shopping and forgot her wallet.

In my current bag, my phone is a lot easier to access than my wallet. So I use Apple Pay wherever I can.

I can't really use it many places. So far it's mostly Trader Joe's and Walgreens. Local coffee shops, farmer's market, I gotta take out the cards. But this will change; a few years ago I had to bring cash to the farmer's market and now everyone there can swipe a card with their smartphone.

It'll be interesting to see what the small-vendor uptake of Square's NFC reader is when it comes out...

interesting, I use it at Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, quicker than card.

When it works, it works. I can't imagine it won't be standard to pay by phone, with integrated loyalty program.

Meanwhile the chip cards are perceived to be slower than magnetic strip. How is that even possible?

http://www.businessinsider.com/us-shoppers-are-so-annoyed-wi...

and never mind the insanity of MCX and CurrentC http://gizmodo.com/how-corporate-greed-is-trying-to-kill-app...

It's only been about a year and I have to think Apple is pretty well positioned to get people using phones, have a feature that works better than Android, and eventually get a nice vig.

If the merchants and banks and credit card companies don't get their heads out of their butts, Apple could even end up being a tail that wags the dog and running the table on payments.

I've used it at many places in NYC: Walgreens, Duane Reade, Whole Foods, McDonalds, a local grocer, vending machines, Apple Store, Best Buy.

An important point is that Apple uses a token and not your CC for paying and thus you protect your CC from hacks. When I tell people this advantage (Do you remember Target, Lowes hacks?) they are very interested.

You can also conveniently look up your last few transactions on the phone.

Honestly, the user experience of paying by credit card is just getting too complicated. Which of the 3 contact-less payment vendors can you use? Do you hand your card to the cashier or not? Do you swipe it or insert it (who knows, the cashier has to tell you)?

I miss the days when you just handed your payment (cash, card, check) to a trained cashier, and they just handled the rest.

It's a bit surprising since Apple Pay has, by far, one of the better UXs for a wallet application. Adding cards is really easy and paying with Touch ID is really simple and intuitive.

I imagined that once Apple finally came out with a mobile payments solution, Mainstream America would pounce on it, but it hasn't seemed to happen yet (or maybe ever).

Apple Pay does not solve a problem for me when shopping at a cash register. Maybe there would be slight benefit if I had a Apple Watch, which I don't.

It would be great if I could use it more online though. I think I used it once and I didn't have to input my name and address. Pecking this out on an iPhone is a pain.

It's a dumb idea. Pulling out a card and swiping is quick and easy. And youre not fumbling with a $900 computer while people wait behind you, for no benefit. They'd have to pay 2-3% cash back for people to switch. But that's the money the banks and phone companies want for themselves.

I sure as hell don't, assuming the retailer accepts at all (most up here don't), the cashier almost never knows how to make it work and looks at me like I'm trying to pull a scam when I pull my phone out instead of my wallet.

Joys of living in the backwoods.

I live in Cupertino and I've barely seen anywhere that even accepts it, and I can only assume that we have possibly the highest penetration of independent retailers anywhere on the planet.

In fact, the only place I see it used consistently is the Apple corporate cafe.

Here in San Francisco, I only see it my local independent grocery store, Walgreens, and Whole Foods (where I don't regularly shop). Not Lowes, Safeway, Bevmo, not any restaurant or liquor store, of course.

I don't use Apple Pay for one very simple reason: it's an automatic habit to reach for a card.

I am not actively choosing NOT to use it. I just have no compelling reason to use it despite my card habit.

only place I've had a seamless experience is a Coke machine in the Best Western in Moscow, Idaho. Everywhere else has sucked or not worked.

There are lots of contactless POS in Canada, and Apple Pay just got here. But it's still just Amex. Not exactly mainstream...

I quite like it.

It may count as separate, but it's also really useful for paying on the phone itself. It's how I always pay on Just Eat.

It's not well advertised, but I use it everywhere that accepts it when I'm not using cash.

More a solution in search of a problem