Apple Pay is yet to gain widespread adoption among iPhone 6 owners due to poor consumer awareness of which stores accept the NFC payments technology and a lack of understanding of how the service works, a survey conducted by InfoScout has found. Those who have used it, however, compare it highly favourably to using a traditional plastic card.

SURVEY: Infoscout asked iPhone 6 owners why they haven’t tried Apple Pay. Click to enlarge.

InfoScout tracks the shopping behavior and opinions of a 170,000-household panel and based its findings on consumers who both own an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus and shopped at a retail store that accepts Apple Pay during the Black Friday (28 November) weekend.

Just under one in ten (9.1%) of the sample have ever used the service to make an NFC payment, the survey found, and just under 5% made an Apple Pay purchase during the annual discount shopping bonanza.

“To understand the ‘why’ behind this behavior we explored the extent to which the product or experience itself was the culprit,” InfoScout says. “We asked Apple Pay users what they thought of it as compared to swiping a card, and found overwhelmingly positive reactions to the experience.”

73% answered that it had better ease of use, 67% said it had greater speed at checkout, 67% said it had better security and 67% said it offered more convenience.

“If Apple Pay users have had such positive experiences,” InfoScout then asked, “why did only half of them use Apple Pay when given the chance on Black Friday?”

31% said they didn’t use Apple Pay that weekend because they didn’t know whether or not the store accepted it. 25% said they forgot to use it, 19% said they didn’t have their phone handy, 6% said they get rewards for using a different payment method, 6% were worried it might not work and a further 6% said it takes too long.

Among the 90% of iPhone 6 and 6 Plus users who have yet to try Apple Pay, the main reason for not choosing to do so was because they weren’t familiar with how it worked (32%). 30% said they were satisfied with their current payment methods, 19% said they were concerned about security, 11% said they hadn’t heard of Apple Pay before the survey and 5% said they tried to register a card with Apple Pay but it didn’t work.

“A whopping 32% of eligible users haven’t tried Apple Pay because they aren’t familiar with how it works, and 11% simply haven’t heard of it,” InfoScout concludes. “That means that nearly half of people who are eligible to use Apple Pay can still be influenced via informational outreach or educational advertising.”