MERCATOR: Projected growth in Apple Pay capable smartphones from 2015 to 2020

Some 100m Apple Pay-capable smartphones will be available in the US in 2020, up from 53m this year, according to Mercator Advisory Group. The company is also forecasting that the future of the mobile payment service will be bright, despite usage problems that surfaced among early adopters attempting to make an in-store purchase using the service.

‘Apple Pay at Six Months: A Medium-Term Outlook’ shows that, by next year, 61m capable devices will be available in the US, 71m will be available by 2017, 83m will be available by 2018 and 95m will be available by 2019.

“Early consumer surveys of iPhone users reveal that few users have both enabled a card on the app and gone ahead to make a purchase with it; worse, few retailers seem to support near field communication, or NFC, payments — just 700,000 locations according to Apple’s latest reckoning,” Mercator says.

“Writing off Apple Pay for its slow initial adoption misses the forest for the trees. Mobile is increasingly becoming the foundation of all retail experiences, whether online or in-store — Apple Pay, by making it easier to shop on mobile, makes the entire experience more convenient and far more secure.”

“Apple Pay’s elimination of the inconvenience of entering card numbers to complete purchases on smartphones and tablets will hasten mobile’s growing dominance of the overall ecommerce pie, which continues to expand,” adds Nikhil Joseph, an emerging technologies analyst at the Mercator Advisory Group and the author of the research note.

“We will also see brick-and-mortar merchants creating new retail experiences that leverage Apple Pay in their native apps for a seamless payment experience.”