Survey: Apple Pay surpasses PayPal in mobile payments

Apple Pay vs PayPal ChangeWave chart 002

Apple Pay is picking up steam and has hit an important milestone: the service is outperforming PayPal in mobile payments, according to a new 451 Research survey shared with iDownloadBlog on Tuesday. It’s been gaining momentum in the mobile payments space since becoming available six months ago, primarily at the expense of PayPal.

The March study, conducted by 451 Research’s ChangeWave service, consisted of 4,168 respondents primarily based in North America, and looked at planned use of mobile payment applications and the issue of security.

Respondents interested in buying an Apple Watch are twice as likely (54 percent) as all other smartphone owners to say they’ll use mobile payment apps (29 percent said ‘Very Likely’ and 25 percent said ‘Somewhat Likely’).

And overall consumer interest in Samsung’s mobile payments service (which is launching this summer) sits at a meager eight percent of respondents who are ‘Very Likely’ or ‘Somewhat Likely’ to use Samsung Pay in the future.

“But that number jumps to 25 percent among Samsung smartphone owners, and surges to 46 percent among those planning to buy a Samsung smartphone in the next 90 days,” reads the study.

In addition to commanding the highest satisfaction rating, Apple Pay has given PayPal a run for its money, as evidenced by the chart above. For those wondering, June 2014 response choice was Apple Passbook.

The second-ranked PayPal lost four percentage points compared to three months ago. PayPal should also be worried by the following two charts. As shown, Apple Pay is clearly the winner in terms of preferred mobile payment methods going forward.

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Nearly half the respondents, or about 45 percent, said they planned on using Apple’s service in the next 90 days to make payments on the go versus the previous score of forty percent for Apple Pay in December.

Apple Pay vs PayPal ChangeWave chart 001

In terms of the satisfaction rating, Apple Pay is ahead of PayPal and has chalked up double the Google Wallet score, sitting comfortably at a cool 66 percent, with PayPal following with a 45 percent satisfaction rating and Google Wallet occupying the third place with 33 percent.

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And when it comes to consumer trust, the numbers paint a slow but steady improvement in the perception of security over the past year. Nearly one in four respondents now deem mobile payments more secure than traditional credit cards versus a year ago. Some 27 percent think mobile payments are less secure today, a huge 26-percentage point drop from a whopping 43 percent in March of last year.

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Interestingly enough, the Secure Storage of Financial Account Information was a more important feature in a mobile app (84 percent) to respondents than the Widespread Acceptance Among Merchants (70 percent).

Neither of which necessarily plays to Apple’s favor, however.

While Apple Pay stores a user’s credit card information in an isolated portion of the NFC chip dubbed Secure Enclave, and only transmits tokenized information which doesn’t contain confidential or private information, the company did suffer some bad press due to irresponsible reporting of an uptick in Apple Pay fraud, wrongly attributed to Apple.

VISA Apple Pay teaser

In reality, it had everything to do with banks and nothing to do with Apple.

Out of fear of missing the Apple Pay boat, overzealous banks did not think through their verification methods, leaving the door open to attackers who would use social engineering to impersonating the victim and set up new iPhones with stolen credit card information.

And as you know, Apple Pay is still U.S.-only and not as widespread yet as other payment methods. Back in March, Apple signed up fourteen new merchants to Apple Pay, including Coke and Walt Disney.

And just earlier today, Apple Pay added 31 more banks and credit unions from around the United States, bringing the total to more than 200 financial institutions and 2,000 banks that support the service in the United States.

Apple maintains a running list of Apple Pay participating issuers that you can check out here.

Source: 451 Research