Pay Finders App Maps Apple Pay Locations

Using Apple Pay may be getting easier, or at least finding out where you can use it.

A new iPhone app called Pay Finders brings together crowdsourced data from Apple enthusiasts with information from companies within the payments industry to help people find out which businesses around them accept the mobile payment method, Re/code reported yesterday (Nov. 10).

“Why don’t people use Apple Pay?” Pay Finders Creator Brian Roemmele asked in an interview with Re/code.

“A, I didn’t know the business accepted Apple Pay, or B, I forgot,” Roemmele answered.

While the current version of Pay Finders is designed to address point A, Roemmele told Re/code that future iterations of the app may include location-based notifications to alert a user when an Apple Pay-compatible business is nearby.

In a new round of Apple Pay figures last month, the mobile payments offering seemed to have turned in a very solid Year 1 performance.

According to data from the 2015 North America Consumer Digital Payments Survey, Apple Pay is used in 68 percent of all in-store mobile payments in the U.S. The survey further showed that North Americans (U.S. residents and Canadians, specifically) are 10 percent more aware of mobile payments than they were a year ago, with mobile awareness crossing over into majority territory for the first time at 52 percent.

While opinions on Apple Pay adoption vary drastically depending on who is analyzing it, Apple itself is more than pleased with the performance and availability of its payment system.

“We’re off to a great start, and we are seeing continued, double-digit monthly growth in Apple Pay transactions since launch,” Apple said in an emailed statement to Bloomberg last month. “And our customers love Apple Pay. A recent survey found satisfaction rates of 98 percent. Merchants love it, too, and tell us that the added security and convenience Apple Pay brings their customers is a huge benefit.”

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