Apple Pay is not mature: 80% of iPhone 6 users in the US do not use it

[[129069]]

According to a survey of 1,000 iPhone 6 and 6 Plus users in the United States by Trustev, an Irish anti-fraud company, 80% of them have not tried Apple Pay so far. The 20% of people who have used it said that they still pay with cash or credit cards most of the time.

2.1% of people who call themselves super users use it more than 10 times a week. Among the "pioneers", 80% use it less than 3 times a week on average, and 30% never use it again after trying it once...

In terms of the motivations of Apple fans to use Apple Pay, 63% of them use it for convenience, and 40% of them mention that it is cool. In comparison, Apple's main selling points of "security" and "no need to carry a wallet" ranked third and fourth for choosing Apple Pay.

In addition, according to Trustev's survey results, most of the people who use Apple Pay in the United States are middle-aged, with a similar ratio of men to women, and the age group is concentrated between 35 and 54 years old. However, young people aged 18 to 24 who pursue coolness have the highest usage rate. Trustev said that this may be due to the limited financial ability of young people, and using Apple Pay requires a credit card or debit card.

The survey reflects that perhaps paying with a credit card is not that bad. For example, in terms of handling fees, in the United States, when people swipe their credit cards at a consumer location, the merchant must pay a 2% handling fee to the credit card company. For each transaction generated through the Apple Pay platform, the merchant must also pay a 1%-2% handling fee to the credit card company. The card swipe fees borne by the merchant are ultimately passed on to consumers by allocating them to the cost of the goods.

In addition, some merchants' membership cards are not integrated into Apple Pay. If you want to add points to your membership card, the cashier still needs to scan a separate QR code in Passbook. At the same time, this also gives CurrentC, a mobile payment tool launched by the US Retail Alliance MCX, a glimmer of hope.

CurrentC will provide consumers with a rich discount program, and it emphasizes "de-credit cardization": consumers can bind CurrentC to their debit cards, gift cards, and bank accounts, and use CurrentC to swipe their debit cards for consumption, with a transaction fee of only 12 cents per transaction.

Earlier, in Apple's first quarter conference call, Cook said that about 750 banks and credit unions currently support Apple Pay, and two-thirds of transactions generated through wireless payment platforms are completed through Apple Pay. As for retailers, he mentioned that 80% of online payments for Panera Bread, a US chain, come from Apple Pay, and the use of wireless payment channels at Whole Foods Market has increased by 80%.

Cook said: I was shocked! We only launched this payment system in October last year, and now so many merchants use Apple Pay.

However, perhaps Apple has placed too high hopes on mobile payment tools such as Apple Pay at this stage. After all, Cook did not mention the performance of Apple Pay at the Apple Watch launch conference this morning, only mentioning that more than 2,500 banks in the United States have supported Apple Pay and more than 700,000 retail stores have cooperated. In addition, according to a market survey on Black Friday by market research firm Infoscout, only 9.1% of iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus shoppers tried to use Apple Pay on Black Friday, the largest shopping day of the year in the United States, and only 4.6% of users said they would intend to use Apple Pay in the future.

Although the mobile payment market has a bright future, it is still a mixed bag. Will 2015 be the year of Apple Pay as Cook said? We will have to wait and see.

There is recent news that Apple Pay will start supporting China UnionPay on March 24. I wonder if this big shopping country will bring some surprises to Cook.