94% of U.S. iPhone customers don't use Apple Pay, survey finds

Apple Pay campus
Apple Pay campus (Image credit: Apple)

What you need to know

  • A new survey claims that nearly 94% of customers don't use Apple Pay in the U.S.
  • New figures from PYMNTS claim that only 6.1% of people who have Apple Pay activated use it in-store.

A new survey from PYMNTS.com claims that nearly 94% of people who have Apple Pay set up on their iPhone do not use the feature when they're in a store.

Published today, the report states:

Seven years post-launch, new PYMNTS data shows that 93.9% of consumers with Apple Pay activated on their iPhones do not use it in-store to pay for purchases. That means only 6.1% do. That finding is based on PYMNTS' national study of 3,671 U.S. consumers conducted between Aug. 3-10, 2021. After seven years, Apple Pay's adoption and usage isn't much larger than it was 2015 (5.1%), a year after its launch, and is the same as it was in 2019, the last full year before the pandemic.

According to PYMNTS'sfigures, only 43.5% of consumers have devices that support Apple Pay, and 70% of merchants take Apple Pay, however, only 6.1% of eligible transactions use Apple Pay.

Whilst the figures point to pretty poor adoption figures for Apple Pay, there is some good news. Surveying mobile wallet payments, PYMNTS found some 45.5% of them were made by Apple Pay, beating out rivals like PayPal, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay.

Apple is reportedly looking to expands its Apple Pay horizons with a new 'Apple Pay Later' service that would let it offer customers the chance to pay for goods and services using installments.

Stephen Warwick
News Editor

Stephen Warwick has written about Apple for five years at iMore and previously elsewhere. He covers all of iMore's latest breaking news regarding all of Apple's products and services, both hardware and software. Stephen has interviewed industry experts in a range of fields including finance, litigation, security, and more. He also specializes in curating and reviewing audio hardware and has experience beyond journalism in sound engineering, production, and design. Before becoming a writer Stephen studied Ancient History at University and also worked at Apple for more than two years. Stephen is also a host on the iMore show, a weekly podcast recorded live that discusses the latest in breaking Apple news, as well as featuring fun trivia about all things Apple. Follow him on Twitter @stephenwarwick9