77% of Mobile Payments Among Debit Users are on Apple Pay: Study

Apple Pay has captured the lion’s share of payments among debit card users with mobile wallets, according to new data from Auriemma Consulting Group.

The payments and lending advisory firm’s study of debit card issuers found that 77% of mobile wallet transactions used Apple Pay. Samsung Pay made up 17% of mobile wallet transactions among debit card users, and Google Pay made up just 6%.

“The high adoption rate among debit card users may come down to demographics,” Auriemma Debit Management Roundtable Director Anita Solaman said. “Apple users skew younger, and younger consumers are more likely to be debit users.”

The study also found that despite Apple Pay’s massive market share among debit card users, Samsung Pay users were the most engaged, making 7.3 transactions per month on average, compared to 5.5 transactions per month for Apple Pay and Google Pay users.

Part of the reason may be that Samsung Pay works with NFC card readers, as well as with the traditional magstripe card readers that many merchants still use. Apple Pay and Google Pay only work with NFC card readers, the study said.

Nonetheless, Auriemma Consulting Group also said Apple Pay’s first-to-market status likely has contributed to its dominance.

Since then, mobile wallets such as Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and Google Pay have become a way for credit unions and other debit card issuers to join the mobile payments fray without having to develop their own apps. In turn, some credit unions and other financial institutions have focused on driving adoption of Apple Pay and its competitors — many even help members add their debit cards to the mobile wallets on their devices, the firm noted.

“Provisioning a card has become part of the onboarding process,” Solaman added. “Banks are making it even more seamless to add a card to the mobile wallet to spur adoption and usage.”

The mobile payments market is still tiny, making up just 0.6% of debit card transactions in the second quarter of 2018, according to the study.

The share of debit transactions made via mobile wallets increased 75% year over year, however.

“Roadmaps for 2019 are all about digital, friction removal and customer experience,” Solaman said. “For many debit card issuers, mobile wallets are a key part of that strategy.”

The Auriemma Consulting Group study is the latest is a string of research suggesting that mobile wallets are on the brink of going mainstream with consumers.

A separate mobile payments study by Juniper Research, for instance, recently projected that 30% of in-store purchases will be made the contactless payment cards and mobile wallets by 2020.

Mobile wallet options from Apple, Samsung, Google and similar “OEM pay wallets” will likely drive most of the growth in the mobile contactless payment market, reaching 450 million users by 2020, it added.

Juniper Research also predicted that Apple will account for about 50% of all OEM pay users globally by 2020.

Merchants may be less enthused about mobile wallets, however. Another recent survey of almost 600 merchants found that between 2017 and 2018, the percentage accepting Apple Pay fell from 48% to 35% and the percentage accepting Google Pay sank from 38% to 25%.