Apple Pay already handles 5% of card payments globally, and a market research firm says Apple could double that amount by 2025.
Following trend lines, Bernstein says Apple Pay could reach 10% of transactions in five years. “There are indeed plenty of reasons to worry that Apple may attempt to disrupt the payments ecosystem,” wrote analysts from this firm today in a research note.
Apple Pay doubled during the holiday quarter
Anyone needing proof of the growth of Apple’s on-iPhone payment system need look no farther than this statement from CEO Tim Cook about the last quarter of 2019: “For Apple Pay, revenue and transactions more than doubled year-over-year with the run rate exceeding 15 billion transactions a year.”
There’s a regular stream of announcements about new banks or retailers supporting this system. In just the past few months that’s included a huge bank in Australia, Europe’s Curve card and even the Salvation Army.
Growing fast enough to draw scrutiny
Apple Pay uses iOS handsets’ NFC (Near Field Communications) capabilities to make transactions with stores’ point of sale machines. Apple’s is the only payment system with access to this NFC capability. This means it’s impossible to make a fully-functional version of WeChat Pay or Samsung Pay for iPhone.
That’s caused the EU antitrust investigators to look into this payment system, checking to see whether Apple has given it an unfair advantage.
Via: Quartz
