Never let it be said that Apple doesn’t know how to launch a product. As October ends, Apple can report 1+ million downloads of its new digital wallet in just three days, a milestone that took Dunkin’ Donuts 6 weeks to achieve and Starbucks even a bit longer.
But that’s not all of the numbers that you’ll need to pull out of your hat to get any treats this Halloween. Here’s what you need to know this week’s PYMNTS Apple Pay (and related stuff) By the Numbers.
$1.9 B | What Verifone Says It’s Sales Will Be In The Fiscal Year That Ends This Month
Wall Street is starting to notice the many benefactors of payments who have changed, fueled by Apple Pay. At the top of that list is now VeriFone. Their rationale is that Apple Pay will push a new wave of POS upgrades to support NFC as merchants clamor to enable NFC in order to, well accept Apple Pay. And since VeriFone Systems has about a 60 percent share of retail payment terminals in the U.S. and says that sales are likely to grow 9 percent, that totals $1.9 billion in the fiscal year that ends this month. Growth is expected to continue as retailers move to newer terminals that support near field communication, or NFC, as well as new standards for chip-enabled credit cards.
460 M | The Number Of Hits You’ll Get If You Search For “Apple Pay” On Google
Yes, we told you about that last week, but this number is almost 2x the number just 6 days ago. If you search Google News for Apple Pay, the yield is 16.6 million hits.
1M | The Number Of Cards Registered With Apple Pay Within 72 Hours Of Launch
Apple CEO Tim Cook said that more than one-million payment cards were activated within Apple Pay within 72 hours of its launch a week ago. “You are only relevant as a retailer or merchant if your customers love you,” Cook said, “It’s the first and only mobile payment system that’s easy, private and secure.” He added that Apple Pay will thrive in the long run.
With 1 million down, Cook and company only have 799 million credit and debit cards left to go.
~12K | The Number of CVS and Rite Aide Locations That Took Apple Pay For Less Than 1 Week
It started with the Rite Aide and then spread to CVS, as merchants who signed on with CurrentC (aka MCX) wallet have now shut off NFC access to consumers, thus shutting them off of any ability to use Apple Pay.
“These retailers are in a real jam,” said Karen Webster, chief executive of Market Platform Dynamics told the New York Times. “The last thing merchants want is ticking off their consumers over payment,”
61-151 Days | The Length of Time Retailers Will Have To Wait For CurrentC
Well, that is if CurrentC launches by the end of March 2015. We don’t really know for sure. What we do know for sure is that retailers that are foregoing Apple Pay in favor of CurrentC will also have some waiting to do – as CurrentC will not be available until “sometime in early 2015.”
$20 | The Amount Wells Fargo Is Paying People To Sign-Up For Apple Pay
If you’re going to go mobile payments, then really do it. That seems to be the approach of Wells Fargo, which is paying credit card customers $20 to sign up for Apple Pay. Debit and prepaid customers will only get $10 to sign up and will have to wait 45 days to get the money. Credit interchange is where it’s at!
“Use your iPhone 6 to make an Apple Pay purchase with your Wells Fargo Credit Card by November 30, 2014, and you’ll earn a $20 statement credit,” Wells Fargo said in its promotion.
18 | The Percentage Growth In the S&P 500 In 2014 Attributed To Apple
Wowza. Apple in general—and the iPhone in particular—is having an outsized impact on the U.S. and global economies. Apple is the world’s largest company, when measured by market capitalization and it accounts for about 3.5 percent of the weighting of the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index. Apple accounted for 18 percent of the entire rise of the S.&P. 500 index this year. Additionally, the iPhone is made mainly overseas and sold worldwide, it is stimulating the economy in other regions, particular in East Asia and it keeps a substantial amount of its cash abroad.
17 | The Percentage of Smart Phone Owners That Have Actually Used Apple Passbook
Apple Pay has gotten a lot of attention, but it turns out that one of the things it might be breathing life into is Apple Passbook. It was sort of no man’s land according to research from Thrive Analytics who said that only 17 percent of U.S. consumers with smartphones had ever used it. This compares to 79 percent of users who had used PayPal and 40 percent who had used Google Wallet.But those 17 percent were loyal users, with 60 percent of those users saying that they used it on a weekly basis (boarding passes maybe?) compared with 40 percent of PayPal users who said they used PayPal weekly and 49 percent of Google Wallet users who said they used it weekly.
4 | The Number Of Days It Took For The Amazon Rewards Visa To Get Compatible With Apple Pay
Squashing a flurry of speculation about whether Amazon and Apple were fighting over mobile payments, the Amazon Rewards card was available for use in Apple Pay by October 24, four days after users complained that the Amazon cards couldn’t be added to customers’ digital wallets and after JPMorgan Chase, the card’s issuer, confirmed that Amazon wasn’t supporting Apple Pay — but didn’t explain why.
We don’t care to know what happened over the course of those 4 days to change things, but no matter, those card holders are now happy Apple Pay campers.
1 | The Number Of CurrentC Retailers Who Say They Will Support Apple Pay
Meijer finds itself a member of a very exclusive club: a CurrentC retailer that also says that it will accept Apple Pay.
Meijer says it has no plans to drop MCX or Apple Pay. Meijer has had NFC technology in its stores for five year to support its other wallets that include MasterCard and Visa credit cards. And, despite other major retailer’s backing off the Apple Pay bandwagon, Meijer’s policy on digital wallets hasn’t changed, according to spokeman Frank Guglielmi,
“We have had the technology in our stores to accept mobile wallets for several years now,” Guglielmi said in the article. “If a customer has Apple Pay capability, our hardware works with it. We don’t plan to remove or disable these systems.”