Apple Pay will likely be accepted in 60% of U.S. retail locations by the end of 2018, says Apple’s VP of Apple Pay Jennifer Bailey. Bailey made the comments to Fortune in an interview at the company’s Brainstorm Reinvent Conference.
Apple expects that Apple Pay will be in 60% of U.S. retail locations by the end of the year, Bailey said. The Apple Wallet is now in 24 countries, with even faster growth outside the United States. Owners of iPhones can enter public transit with the Apple Wallet in 12 cities worldwide, including Tokyo, Beijing, and Shanghai via closed loop technology and London and Moscow via open loop technology. Transit adoption has reached particularly high penetration in Tokyo, Bailey said.
In addition, the Apple Wallet app is used for customer loyalty programs, and could soon be used to allow corporate access and hotel key cards. Apple allows its employees to gain access to their campus via Apple Wallet.
Starting next week, students at Apple Wallet for Duke University, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Alabama will be allowed to use Apple Wallet as student ID cards. The feature will allow students to use their Apple Wallet ID card to enter their dorms and pay for laundry.
“It’s a tremendous new area for us to focus on, which is really access,” Bailey said.
Apple introduced Apple Pay in 2014, working WITH credit card providers—not working to replace them.
“When we thought about Apple Pay, we thought, there are a lot of payments out there that our customers already love and trust,” said Bailey. “We don’t sit around and think about, ‘what industry should we disrupt?’ We think about, what great customer experiences can we develop?”
Plus, getting a bank charter would have put Apple in regulatory territory, and “we don’t want to be regulated,” Bailey said.