Apple – #1 Payment Innovator

As Apple is set to launch the iPhone 14 today, I was thinking about the significance of ApplePay’s innovations to V/MA and how these innovations benefit the entire network of merchants and consumers. Making payments easy is hard… Apple is the lead “innovator” within the V/MA networks at the consumer touchpoint (with Google, Samsung, PayPal and others in the mix). Their “wallet” and branded integration into both POS AND mCom is unrivaled and represents 93% of all mobile wallet payments in the US (2021).

This 2021 Pulse Network Debit Whitepaper provides the best public view on performance (US Only), with TPV CAGR over 50%. Quite frankly, when it comes to mobile payments, it’s silly to talk about anything else by ApplePay in the US

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Pay By Bank – Where does it work and why?

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Friday I was a tad “let down” in the Sionic/TCH/MX release of Pay-by-Bank. Per my blog on Google/TCH launch and Google P2P I was anticipating something much bigger. To be clear I firmly believe that TCH is working on an “ApplePay Competitor”, which will entail TCH tokens inside of Google’s phone, but this will be 3-6 months out.  Per the blogs above, I see neither pay-by-bank nor TCH Tokens in Google Pay as a threat to V/MA. 

Today I thought I would drill down into “pay by bank”, the dynamics of why it works in some markets, and why I see little threat to V/MA in replacing core cards in eCom or at POS.

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New MA Rate Tier for Installments (ApplePay Later)?

Quick 18 Aug update to Aug 1 blog below. This new rate tier was confirmed by Bloomberg this week. According to Bloomberg, Settlment product acceptance is optional for merchants (does not operate in Accept All Cards rule). Optional acceptance is quite surprising. I surveyed 3 top 10 merchants (non-grocers) and couldn’t find one that plans to sign up for the product (other than Apple).

Note that card based BNPL (consumer BNPL) has no proven market data showing increased conversions. My inclination is to believe Card based BNPL conversion will closely mirror a normal credit card. See the rationale in my blog Three Flavors of BNPL.


As I outlined in June, Apple Pay Later will be (est Oct)  is the first major launch customer of Mastercard Installments. A large retailer just related that Mastercard plans for a new rate tier to support this product. 

“Somewhere around 300 bps” – Top 5 US Merchant

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