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Apple Pay leads sluggish mobile wallet market

A new study by PYMNTS.com reveals that mobile wallet usage in the U.S.  remains small and shows no signs of increasing soon. However, Apple Pay leads the pack when it comes to number of consumer have at tied it at least once at 22%. That compares to about 15% for Samsung Pay and less than 10% for Android Pay.

According to the latest edition of the PYMNTS/InfoScout Mobile Payment Adoption less than one in 20 consumers who have one of the main wallet (Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and Android Pay) use it when they can. The study also showed percentage of people who have so much as tried a mobile wallets appears has flatlined for most mobile wallets – except Apple Pay, which has been in the market the longest and actually seen its first time usage go down.

Samsung Pay leads when it comes to the fraction of people who have Samsung Pay on their phones and have used it for a transaction when they could because the merchant had the right technology with 4.5%. Apple Pay came in a close second at 4.0% and remains Android Pay remains far behind in third place at 1.1%.

According to PYMNTS, 3.3% of consumers have Walmart pay installed on their phone after 8 months in the market. That compares to Apple Pay (2.5 years in the market) and Samsung and Android Pay (1.5 years in the market) which have seen fairly flat usage stats for their entire existence.

According to survey respondents, the main reason they aren’t using mobile wallets is that they’re happy with their current payment methods such as plastic cards and cash. One bright spot for mobile wallets is that people are becoming less worried about security.

“So far mobile wallets aren’t attracting much consumer interest with Apple Pay the oldest regularly clocking in between 4-5% of people who could use their wallet actually using it,” Karen Webster, CEO of PYMNTS, says. “The lesson, though, isn’t that wallets are dead but that the providers, and innovators, really need to focus on features—or something—that will get consumers, and merchants, excited.”

The PYMNTS/InfoScout Mobile Payments Adoption Survey was conducted in March 2017 and is based on the responses form more than 7,655 thousand consumers.

Dennis Sellers
the authorDennis Sellers
Dennis Sellers is the editor/publisher of Apple World Today. He’s been an “Apple journalist” since 1995 (starting with the first big Apple news site, MacCentral). He loves to read, run, play sports, and watch movies.