Contactless payment system users, such as Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, are on track to hit 450 million by 2020, and Apple is going to account for half of them around the world. That’s according to a new report from Juniper Research.
The report states that Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay and what they call “other OEM Pay” platforms to make up 15% of all in-store payment transactions by 2020. It also says,
Juniper Research estimates that driven by payment cards and mobile wallets, in-store contactless payments will reach $2 trillion by 2020, representing 15% of the total point of sale transactions. Contactless payments will exceed the $1 trillion mark for the first time in 2018, a year earlier than previously anticipated by Juniper.
Contactless payment systems use NFC, or Near Field Communication, chips in smartphones and smart watches for transactions instead of swiping credit cards at POS terminals. In the case of Apple Pay, it’s a much more secure process because credit or debit card numbers are never revealed during the transaction even though the payment comes from your card.
Contactless payments are also more convenient and faster because shoppers don’t have to wait through a slow transaction approval process like they do with chip-and-pin.
Looking beyond 2020, Nitin Bhas, who authored the Juniper paper said, “We believe that growth over the next 5 years will continue to be dominated by offerings from the major OEM players.”
With contactless payment gaining more popularity, and Apple expected to make up half of all the transactions world wide, maybe we’ll finally see companies like Walmart and Target relent and start supporting Apple Pay.