Will Apple Pay Drive 20% Of Mobile Payments In 2 Years?

The full capacity of Apple Pay is yet to be seen since its September launch, but it’s predicted that Apple’s mobile wallet could make up for as much as 20 percent of the payments market by 2019, Investors.com reported.

The article, citing a survey of technology executives by investment bank RBC Capital Markets, said despite consumers slow adaption to digital wallets, Apple’s security measure with its fingerprint Touch ID gives it the edge to take it to the next level in payments. It’s also been reported that Apple’s mobile payment push could speed up NFC adoption and spur more interest in mobile wallets.

Of those surveyed, which included 87 tech executives and institutional investors, figures indicated that Apple Pay users will make up for 10-20 percent of payments by 2019. The number of payments may be lagging now, but as NFC adoption becomes widely accepted, growth should be expected at a much quicker rate. Currently only 15-20 percent of U.S. retail locations have NFC-equipped sales terminals, Investors.com reported.

Although it has its skeptics, Apple Pay has already been credited with changing the mobile payments market. Use is growing, a New York Times article reported, but there’s still a long way for Apple Pay to go before the market sees a significant consumer behavioral shift. Jan Dawson, a telecom analyst for Jackdaw Research, told the New York Times that Apple Pay isn’t mainstream since it’s only available on iPhone 6, but said “Apple Pay is going to be a slow-burn success.” For now it’s a novelty, she said, but that’s a major step for mobile payments.

Apple’s brand image may be what gives it an edge.

“Quite frankly, a lot of it has to do with the strength of the Apple brand and how much merchants and customers love how easy the experience is,” Denée Carrington, an analyst with Forrester Research, said in the article. “I’m not saying it’s changing the landscape overnight. But this has never happened with other mobile wallets.”