A new study from Phoenix Marketing International shows that while Apple Pay is still building momentum one year after its launch, overall growth is quickly plateauing. The study also shows a bump in usage rates by Generation-X card holders.
Speaking at the Money 20/20 convention in Las Vegas this week, Greg Weed, Phoenix Marketing’s director of Card Performance Research, said Apple Pay is now being used by 14 percent of households with eligible credit cards. That statistic is impressive for a year-old fledgling payments service, but Weed’s analysis shows a steep decline in adoption going into year two.
“A very rapid initial threshold was achieved by Apple Pay and it is still growing but the growth rate has slowed down,” said Weed.
While an Apple spokeswoman declined to comment, she did note that a company statement in early October cited “double digit monthly growth in Apple Pay transactions” since its launch.
Phoenix Marketing’s stats show Apple Pay reaching 11% of credit card households four months after its release, meaning adoption has grown only three percentage points since February. While the service’s adoption rate was slow, it has proved popular with members of the Generation-X age group, (aged 33 to 48), with an increase in users of 23% since February.
Xers account for 48% of all Apple Pay users, with Millennials accounting for 42%. Millennials also accounted for most of the usage, with some 26% of those users making use of Apple Pay for their payments.
The report shows 86% of users have linked their credit cards to the service, 49% have linked their debit cards, and 22% use various types of prepaid cards. The September survey shows 79% of Apple Pay users said they have completely replaced contactless plastic credit and debit cards with their iPhone and Apple Watch, up from 51% in July.
Phoenix Marketing numbers are the result of sample of 15,000 consumers polled over the past year.
