Apple Pay may be boasting impressive adoption rates but two thirds of people who use the system have run into problems at the checkout, according to a survey from Phoenix Marketing International (PMI).
Launched to much fanfare last October, Apple Pay has been widely credited with giving mobile payments the push they needed to finally hit the mainstream. By February JPMorgan Chase was reporting that over one million of its customers had uploaded their cards to Apple Pay and were actively using the service to make payments.
Of 3002 credit cardholders surveyed by PMI, 11% have used Apple Pay, with the figure jumping to 66% among iPhone 6 owners. Most adopters - 82% - are linking credit cards, although more than half are also adding debit cards.
Apple is seeing unusually high usage conversion rates, with 88% of those that bother to set up a wallet going on to use it. However, repeat usage figures are less impressive, with 48% of people using the system just once, in part because of problems faced by customers when they try to make payments with their iPhones.
Nearly half of those surveyed have visited a store listed as an Apple Pay merchant only to be told that they could not use the system. Even though Apple Pay users generally rate it highly, two out of three have had problems, usually related to terminals not working or taking too long, or store staff not being able to help with queries.
Greg Weed, director, card research, PMI, says: "Since Apple Pay is still in an introductory mode and the NFC acceptance network still has a long way to go, adding a continuously updated ‘local store directory’ to the Passbook app is a necessary, short-term product improvement."