Are Americans using contactless in-store mobile payments like Apple Pay?

It all depends on how you look at it.

According to this study, 90.9% of those who own the iPhone 6 or 6+ in the US have never tried Apple Pay, and 95.4% did not use Apple Pay on Black Friday shopping. Fewer than one in 24 of those who have the latest iPhones used what is supposed to be its “killer feature”: fingerprint enabled in-store contactless payments with NFC technology. That seems disappointing, when I put it that way.

On the other hand, of those who have used Apple Pay at least once, more than half used it to buy something on Black Friday. That seems to be a very successful feature, when I put it that way.

It is far too early to tell. Not everyone knows how to use Apple Pay on their phones, and the 225,000 stores that accept it represent only about 5% of all Point of Sale terminals in the USA. (When asked, 31% said the reason they didn’t use Apple Pay was that they didn’t know if the store accepted it!)

But that half of users are continuing to use the technology is interesting. Most new smart phone features are used once or twice, then never again. The key to the success of mobile in-store contactless payments will come from regular users, not those who try it once.

Sorry for the US focus. But at this time Apple Pay is only available for Americans with iPhone 6 or 6+. The service is expected to come to the UK, Australia and Canada over the course of 2015. And those are only the countries I know about!