A response: Apple Pay adoption
In response to my post on the problems of Apple Pay adoption, some respondents accurately pointed out that Uber has integrated with Apple Pay since 2014. I would like to take this opportunity to address this apparent error, and further develop my argument.
Internationalisation
The screenshot I showed in my post was taken from my device here in Sydney, Australia. Even with Apple Pay activated on my device, I was unable to select it as a payment method in my local Uber app.
Having built products at Bloomberg where localisation was a core requirement of all interactions and functions, as well a file sync/share/store product for Singtel that launched to 54 countries and 110,000 users, I know all too well the challenges of localising a product.
Fun fact: German is the most painful language to localise into from English — what is 5 letters in English can end up being 18 in German and try fitting that on a button!
What I find most insightful about the Uber-Apple Pay integration is that Uber must be supporting different versions of its app in different countries. While I acknowledge that Australia is a small market compared to the US and others, and we have been relatively slow to adopt Apple Pay, the sheer fact that Uber has to support multiple different (and likely dynamic) payment options only adds to the functionality that it must support.
Too often I hear in product meetings (typically when the technology team is absent): “that’s a simple integration”. When you are touching your payment flow, nothing is simple, bar this general rule: It breaks, you don’t get paid. And another payment platform just adds to the amount of software your team needs to support. See my main argument.
And please don’t get me started on the American world view of mobile app development. This view often makes two assumptions in building apps:
- iOS devices are mainstream. While across the US and more specifically SF/NYC this may be the case, when you start looking at Europe and other territories, it is rare to find iPhones in the mainstream (i.e. more than 20% penetration). As a reminder, Apple Pay doesn’t work on Android devices, which the majority of people use.
- Unlimited internet. When I lived in the US, I had unlimited internet. Almost all providers offered included unlimited bandwidth. This is actually unique to the US and one or two other markets. For the rest of the world, data can be expensive. But I’ll save that for another post.
Uber Apple Pay adoption
This was posted on Twitter for my benefit:
Having such an aggressive incentive for Apple Pay adoption two years after integration only raises questions about its uptake to date.
Apply Pay adoption
In my original article, I chose 3 vendors to illustrate my argument around the lack of Apple Pay adoption. I’ll be the first to admit I didn’t do my due diligence with Uber outside of Australia. Regardless of whether I was in error regarding Uber, or the post raised additional questions regarding the cost of installation and support, I should have dived deeper.
I think it’s necessary to tackle this from a different angle, and look at Apple Pay adoption rates in a bit more detail. Let’s start with a list of Apple Pay enabled apps from the App Store on my device. I’m looking at the US apps, using a US VPN location.
In an attempt to be as fair as possible, I am only going to look at in-app adoption of Apple Pay, given that Apple Pay for Safari has only been released recently, and hasn’t had time to reach a plurality of stores for analysis.
Before I address what’s missing from this list, I had a quick look at Best Buy on a hunch. Here were my checkout options (note again: US app, US VPN location):
Apple Pay is not an option. Either Best Buy is supporting multiple dynamic payment options to show to customers (this would further support my cost of checkout payment support argument) or Apple Pay has been removed altogether (draw your own conclusions with Uber running their aggressive promotion).
Who is Apple missing?
While Apple’s featured list represents what seems like a good cross-section of e-commerce apps, let’s see how that stands up. I used Alexa page ranking to find the top e-commerce retailers:
Only nine of these retailers have an app and accept payment by credit card within the app (i.e. outside of in-app payments).
Of these nine retailers, here are those that don’t offer Apple Pay as a payment option:
There are clearly some big names that have to date eschewed Apple Pay. Only Target and Groupon offer Apple Pay in their apps. That’s just 22% of the top e-commerce merchants.
Conclusion
I made an error when I claimed Uber didn’t offer Apple Pay. For the record, I happen to love Uber, and I wasn’t in any way critiquing the company.
In an attempt to move this conversation away from Uber, I’m bringing the focus of this discussion back to my main argument: Apply Pay has clearly not been embraced by the vast majority of leading e-commerce retailers. Why? For the time being, the benefits just aren’t outweighing the costs.
Furthermore, integrating with Apple Pay in some jurisdictions and not others only adds a further hurdle to the work these companies already need to do when it comes to supporting their entire technology integration.
