“PYMNTS has been tracking Apple Pay adoption in conjunction with InfoScout, a retail data analytics firm that tracks consumer trends across merchants using receipt data,” PYMNTS reports. “The first round of figures came in as part of the post-Black Friday shopping post mortem – and the results were less than stellar for Apple Pay – when 91 percent of Apple Pay eligible customers (consumers in a store that accepted the service with a device capable of using it) had never so much as tried the service. The situation had improved somewhat six months later… The number of users that had at least tried Apple Pay had climbed to 15 percent.”
“In March, survey data indicated that 15.1 percent of eligible Apple Pay users had tried the service – when surveyed in June 2015 that had fallen to 13.1 percen,” PYMNTS reports. “Usage fell as well – when asked in March, ‘Did you use Apple Pay on this transaction,’ 39.3 percent of consumers said yes. When asked the same question in June, only 23 percent replied in the affirmative.”
“But here’s the killer stat. Apple Pay also seems to have seen a dip in its committed users,” PYMNTS reports. “In March, 48 percent of iPhone 6 consumers in a store where they could use Apple Pay did. In June, that number had dropped to 33 percent. “People don’t understand why it is they would go about using Apple Pay, they are fine with what they have. And they are not familiar with how they would use Apple Pay if they wanted to,” InfoScout Co-Founder and CEO Jared Schrieber noted.”
“Chris Gardner, CEO of Paydiant, a mobile payments platform which was recently acquired by PayPal, noted that while he likes Apple Pay and finds it to perform as advertised, he thinks that the market has to learn that launching mobile payments isn’t really just about the payment, which he described as ‘the domain of nerds,'” PYMNTS reports. “”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple, give us a reason to use Apple Pay beyond looking like tech dorks in front of the line at the register. What’s the incentive to use Apple Pay? There is none besides looking like a flaming nerd. As if Apple doesn’t have any money. That, inexplicably, is how they approach Apple Pay. Hello, Tim? Eddy? Talk to some people who actually go to stores and shop for things, please.
Incentivize its use! Give Apple Pay users a percentage of every dollar spent via Apple Pay to spend at Apple Stores. Something. Anything! Get people used to using it first. Sheesh. It’s really not that difficult. It really isn’t.
Apple Pay IS superior technology but…
Apple doesn’t advertise, promote, educate or incentivize it’s use.
For years now I have said since Jobs passing Apple’s marketing and promotion has fallen off a cliff. Some have continuously down voted my comments and said Apple isn’t a ‘marketing’ company but finally maybe they can see my point?
Although I agree that products come first many forget that Jobs was also a marketing genius
Educating Customers and retail partners is part of Marketing. (My local Walmart for example doesn’t understand thunderbolt or carry it’s cables — or mini D — in spite of selling thunderbolt macs. So you can’t actually connect the MacBooks they sell to external monitors… )
today it seems lots of retailers and customers are confused about Apple Pay.
Other recent examples of Apple totally screwing up Marketing and PR is the baffling free Bono Album into your device (which supposedly costs tens of millions), and Apple Watch launch (even if there were production issues where was PR to sooth customers?), Confederate Flag in Civil War games etc
Apple’s PR ineptness can also be seen by Apple stocks extremely low PE way lower than Msft or Goog etc.
Has there been a Ad campaign as memorable as 1984, Think Different, Mac / PC guy in the last few years?
Apple has faced numerous issues recently from continuos attacks on Apple Watch sales, a share drop of 15% etc yet PR (or apple executives) have made NO statements , not even talking to sympathetic reporters ). Jobs had a habit of ‘leaking’ info he wanted dissiminated to certain reporter friends. The ONLY memorable PR statements from Apple for years seem to be dealing with SOCIAL issues (important as they are) and not Apple Business issues.
There are many tech nerds who don’t understand marking and think it’s useless but remember without marketing you become Xerox with Xerox Parc, engineers fooling around with great tech (GUI, Mouse, laser printer) but no real money making products. Today it seems Apple is run by engineers who get rewarded for ‘making stuff’ but not for marketing them (like No Mac ads) or fixing issues (like months for Wifi fix).
due to zero Marketing some tech reporters think Apple’s new Macbook ‘Force’ touch pads are Mechanical buttons…. !
Without great Marketing even great products can become failures.
(that’s why Jobs spent countless hours working with Ad directors)
Note that some years ago when last looked at the stats Samsung outspent Apple in marketing 10 dollars to 1 and Google the same for Political Lobbying (10 to 1. and guess who is being roasted by the DOJ, FCC etc).
Withut proper Marketing great tech like Apple Pay fades and so does the stock ( look at how Bezos markteing has boosted Amazon’s no profits to sky high stock PE )…
It’s time for Apple to fix it’s marketing and PR.
Too bad we can’t vote up or down on stories. I would definitely give this one 5 thumbs down.
All you need is a sign at the cash register that states they accept ApplePay, right along with MasterCard, Visa and Discover.
It shouldn’t be our job to educate the casher that their system does indeed work with ApplePay.
That is perhaps an indication of how infrequently Apple Pay is being used at that register/store.
I think there are a couple reasons people use it less. First, we used it a lot in the beginning because we wanted tot try it out. I love it. But MOST places I go do not accept it. And even in places where they do accept it, the kid at the register has no idea that it exists and has to either call someone over or actually place a call to find out how to use it. Mostly it’s the first problem. My grocery stores don’t accept it. Costco doesn’t accept it. Gas stations don’t accept it. The department store I shop doesn’t use it. There’s more support coming soon, but determining if a store accepts it is difficult. Sometimes you can look at the terminal and see the symbol. But many stores have aligned with Current-C and have deactivated their NFC readers. Apple Pay is insanely easy to use (if the store employee knows how to use it and if you know that it can be used at a particular store). It’s very convenient and secure. I wish I could use it at gas stations which are notorious for card skimming and counterfeiting. But it’s an idea whose time has yet to come.
Nothing to see here. It’s going to be a slow burn process, but more and more people will use it just like more and more people are using contactless (and immediately realising its’ hilariously insecure). It’s not going to be an overnight success but will, over time, gather more and more people. Especially as Android manufacturers will all want to try and run their own variant (Samsung Pay etc) on top of whatever Google offer, so it’ll be too fragmented to work well.
Now that all my credit cards have been reissued with chips I use the chip function for the tokenized transaction security when possible. Otherwise the magnetic strip still is available for use. By the end of the year all US retailers using a card reading POS will be required to support it. That may be the largest obstacle that NFC payment systems (Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Google Wallet, Current-C, etc.) will have to overcome.
It’s kind of ridiculous that half the stores don’t support it even if there is a logo saying it should, and McDonald’s employees have no idea what you’re talking about and look at you funny while hanging out the window with their payment processing machine. It’s just ridiculous. Waste of time more often than not, except at vending machines where you don’t have the embarrassment of “why don’t you just use your card” or tons of people waiting behind you.
Uh… venues in which you can use apple pay may be limiting the usage. I would use it everywhere if possible. Of course it is an easy transition for me. I use my card for everything. I carry no cash any more and haven’t for some time now.