Survey: 66% of Apple iPhone 6 and Apple iPhone 6 Plus users have signed up for Apple Pay

Apple Pay has certainly helped consumers focus more attention on mobile payment services. For example, a survey reveals that 66% of Apple iPhone 6 and Apple iPhone 6 Plus users have signed up to use the service. But things are not going as smoothly as it would seem. 50% of Apple Pay users have visited a store that was listed as an Apple Pay merchant only to find out that the store did not accept Apple Pay, or was not yet ready to do so.

Of the 3000 iPhone users surveyed, 48% said that using Apple Pay took too long to use. 42% said that the cashier did not know how to process a transaction using Apple's mobile payment service. Other complaints focused on transactions having the incorrect information, or being put through twice.

Fraud has also been a big issue with Apple Pay. Some banks have discovered criminals typing in stolen credit card numbers into Apple Pay in an attempt to make an illegal purchase using an iPhone. 8% of all transactions handled by Apple Pay are said to be fraudulent. According to Julie Conroy, an analyst at Aite Group, that figure compares to the .1% fraud rate on "traditional" payment cards.

Despite these problems, 800,000 Bank of America customers have loaded 1.1 million cards onto Apple Pay. Banks representing 75% of the volume of Visa transactions have signed up for the token system on iPhones that authenticates purchases. Bill Gajda, head of innovation and strategic partnerships at Visa, says consumers are looking to shop at stores that accept Apple Pay. And the number of stores that do accept the service should increase as the year progresses. That's because banks and retailers are being forced by law to offer POS systems that support NFC chips before the end of the year, or else be held financially responsible for the amount of a fraudulent purchase.

According to data from an industry group, at the end of 2014 a third of registers were converted to handle NFC. That figure will rise to 50% by the end of this year. Because Apple Pay uses NFC connectivity to exchange data with the POS terminal, any increase in the number of registers that use the technology should increase the number of merchants that accept Apple's mobile payment service.

While 700,000 retail locations currently support Apple Pay, the rival system announced by Samsung is already supported in 30 million locations. Samsung Pay uses a combination of NFC and a proprietary Magnetic Secure Transmission technology to allow terminals that don't offer NFC connectivity, to be used by the system.

source: Bloomberg