Before new services like Apple TV+ and Arcade can take off, the Cupertino-based tech giant is relying heavily on its iOS App Store, music streaming platform, and digital wallet solution to yield the kind of revenues investors have come to regularly expect in the last few years. Announced a little over five years ago, Apple Pay quickly emerged as a particularly impressive success story, pretty much achieving US ubiquity and processing almost a billion transactions worldwide every single month as of July.
But perhaps the greatest ever achievement for the Apple-exclusive mobile payment service is beating Starbucks for first place in US usage among the nation's most popular digital wallet apps. That's right, Starbucks had dominated the charts for a number of years, according to eMarketer, despite the coffeehouse chain's mobile payment solution naturally being available at one retailer only.
Apple Pay's significantly wider support obviously helped tip the balance in its favor in 2018, when an estimated 27.7 million Americans used the app on their iPhones or iPads to complete at least one purchase at a participating store. That already remarkable number is predicted to jump to 30.3 million US users this year, which will unsurprisingly widen the gap to the 25.2 million headcount of the thriving industry's silver medalist.
In third place, you might be surprised to find Google Pay edging out Samsung Pay with 12.1 million US users compared to the latter's forecasted 10.8 million total in 2019. Of course, while Samsung phones are selling like hotcakes stateside and the company's mobile payment app supports both NFC and magnetic stripe-only POS terminals, Google Pay can be used on virtually any Android device running OS version 5.0 and up, which seems to have done wonders for the platform's adoption.
Still, Google and Samsung are unlikely to be pleased about trailing Apple by such a huge gap in the US mobile payment service rankings for usage.
Adrian, a mobile technology enthusiast since the Nokia 3310 era, has been a dynamic presence in the tech journalism field, contributing to Android Authority, Digital Trends, and Pocketnow before joining PhoneArena in 2018. His expertise spans across various platforms, with a particular fondness for the diversity of the Android ecosystem. Despite the challenges of balancing full-time parenthood with his work, Adrian's passion for tech trends, running, and movies keeps him energized. His commitment to mid-range smartphones has led to an eclectic collection of devices, saved from personal bankruptcy by his preference for 'adequate' over 'overpriced'.
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