Research study shows Apple Pay adoption is slowing
Apple Pay has grown steadily, but a recent study reveals that the adoption rate may have already peaked and begun to slow. According to a report shared with AppleInsider, Phoenix Marketing sampled a pool of 15,000 consumers to find out the adoption rate as well as which age demographic was most likely to sign up for and use the mobile payment method.
Greg Weed, Phoenix Marketing’s director of card performance research, said at the Money 20/20 convention in Las Vegas that Apple Pay is being used by 14 percent of United States households with eligible credit cards. While that number sounds impressive, considering Apple Pay is only a year old, Weed predicts a steep decline in adoption going into the second year.
The statistics show that Apple Pay reached 11 percent of credit card households by February 2015, meaning the adoption rate only grew three points since then. If that trend continues, that certainly means a much slower adoption rate for Apple Pay going forward.
So who is actually using Apple Pay? Surprisingly, the largest group of Apple Pay users was the Generation X age demographic, defined as consumers aged 33 to 48. Generation X users accounted for 48 percent of all Apple Pay users going into the fourth quarter, while Millennials aged 18 to 32 make up a bulk of the remainder.
While Phoenix Marketing says adoption rate for Apple Pay will begin slowing, I think there still may be hope for another uptick. It seems there are a lot of Millennials who have yet to sign up with Apple Pay. Being a younger generation, more of them could become eligible cardholders entering Apple Pay’s second year of service, and provide the service with another rise in adoption. Also, as the service grows in other markets, such as the recently launched United Kingdom, the service may grow in popularity again in the U.S.
