Apple Pay is barely used by anyone who has it

Apple Pay - iPhone in pocket

Only 6 percent of iPhone users in the United States who have the mobile wallet are actually using it.

According to the results of a new study, only 6 percent of iPhone users who have Apple Pay set up are actually using the mobile wallet app in the United States.

The study was conducted by PYMNTS, showing far less usage than many had expected.

The study showed that about 93.9 percent of US iPhone customers have Apple Pay on their smartphones. The mobile wallet service first launched in September 2014 and was expected to become rapidly popular. That said, even though most iPhone users have the app activated on their phone, only a tiny fraction of them use it to pay for in-store purchases. Only 6.1 percent of them are using it, said the PYMNTS study.

This represents an exceptionally sluggish growth rate in use. In 2015, by the anniversary of the launch of the mobile wallet, PYMNTS had reported that only 5.1 percent of people with the app activated were actually using it. This means that in the six years that have followed, Apple has managed to gain only one percent.

Apple Pay - Mobile Wallet

Some believe that the slow growth in Apple Pay use has to do with limited contactless terminals in stores.

While the iPhone mobile payment app is the most popularly used in the United States, it remains unpopular on the whole. Some have speculated that the reason for this is due to the low number of contactless terminals available in stores. Others suggest that as more iPhone users upgrade their models to those with NFC technology embedded, there will be a notable increase in usage. It will, after all, mean that those device users will be able to pay for their in-person purchases with nothing more than a tap of their phones at the checkout counter.

It should be noted that even as the percentage of iPhone users with Apple Pay using their mobile wallet hasn’t grown much, the transaction totals have. In 2015, the estimated total in transactions at US retail stores using that mobile wallet was about $5 billion. This year, that total has risen to an estimated $90 billion so far.

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