Just two years after the service was launched in October, 2014, and less than a year after Apple, Inc. took it to the web, Apple Pay is now the fifth largest payments platform by transaction volume.
According to a report in The Country Caller, the mobile-wallet-turned-full-scale-payments-platform quickly climbed past other providers like Google Wallet and Amazon Payments to reach fifth place, behind PayPal, PayPal Subscriber, Stripe and Braintree.
PayPal is, of course, the de facto payments processor of choice for millions of people in the United States and around the world. Considering the fact that it also owns Braintree, it’s safe to say that it is extremely difficult to topple them from their number one position in the global online payments arena.
Apple Pay, along with Stripe, is one of two “outsiders” in the Top 5 online payments processors, as you can see. And the only reason they got there is because they opened up the service to web payments via their Safari browser.
One point of interest here is that Apple Pay is also the current leader in the mobile wallet space. We’ve covered that over several articles that you can read here. Now that they’re in the Top 5 payment platforms in the world just a few months after entering the web space, it’s clear that the transactions on mobile devices must have had a lot to do with that.
Despite Apple Pay’s scope of influence being restricted to iOS and macOS devices, they have managed to reach a significant position in the global online payments market. Growth and early adoption were strong for Apple Pay, and the company is now pushing on several fronts to help make it easier for Apple device users to make online payments using Apple Pay.
In Japan, Apple Pay has recently launched their service with the newly released iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, as well as Apple Watch series 2. The difference between this and other markets is that Apple Pay in Japan also supports the FeliCa payments standard rather than exclusively NFC, or near field communication, as is the case in other countries including the United States.
Towards this end, these three products contain a special FeliCa chip so users can make payments in locations that accept Suica prepaid money cards, QuicPay, and iD, as well as all major debit and credit cards.
The service was activated in Japan on October 24, after the release of iOS 10.1, making Japan the twelfth country to get access to Apple Pay.
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