Apple Paying People To Set Up Apple Pay

Apple wants people to use Apple Pay, and it is trying cold hard cash as a way to win new customers.

Starting this week, anyone who signs up for Apple Pay at one of the company’s Apple Stores gets a $5 gift card for doing it. The promotion, which was reported on MacRumors, works like this: When making a purchase in an Apple Store in the U.S. or U.K., the sales clerk will ask if you want to pay using Apple Pay. Say no, and you get nothing. Say yes and you don’t have Apple Pay, then you’ll get a $5 gift card once you sign up on the spot. The gift card is, of course, an iTunes card. The promotion works with any purchase in the store. Even people who return the item get to keep the gift card for setting up Apple Pay.

Apple Pay has gotten off to a slow start since being launched some 20 months ago. While the number of people who have tried Apple Pay has tripled since its launch, it’s not being driven by a hysteria that often follows a new iPhone launch. Because it’s being more broadly made available, more people are trying it, thus the tripling of adoptions.

As MPD CEO Karen Webster recently noted: “The percent of people who use the service more than once has fallen from its peak a year ago and is now sharply lower than what had been seen at launch. After you take into account both who has adopted the service and how often people who have adopted it use it, the numbers have barely moved over 20 months: Roughly speaking, only one person in 20 who have the service use it when they can; 19 out of 20 people who have the service don’t even bother.”

When it comes to expanding where Apple Pay is available, the company isn’t taking it easy. This month, it announced Apple Pay has officially entered the Switzerland market. It marked the first country in Europe, outside of the U.K., to start accepting Apple Pay as a payment method. Currently, the service is available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, China and Singapore.