Apple Pay is now available in 2M retail locations, coming soon to Crate & Barrel, Chick-fil-A, Zappos, and Au Bon Pain
Yet another tech company's stock is getting hammered … Rajesh Pandey / iPhone Hacks : Apple Pay now supported by over 1,000 issuers in the United States Rian Boden / NFC World+ : Apple Pay available in more than 2m US retail locations Malarie Gokey / Digital Trends : Here are all the places that support Apple Pay, including 2 million stores Rex Crum / SiliconBeat : Biz Break: LinkedIn loses its connections Leena Rao / Fortune : Apple Pay Is Now Accepted At Millions of Stores David Murphy / PCMag UK : Apple Pay Now Supported at 2 Million Locations Oscar Raymundo / Macworld : Apple Pay is now accepted in 2 million locations, with more retailers coming soon Dana Hatic / Eater : Apple Pay Will Soon Be Adopted by Chick-fil-A and Au Bon Pain Jack Purcher / Patently Apple : Apple Pay is Charging into 2016 with Two Million Retail Locations On Board with new Retailers Coming on Stream Usman / iPhone in Canada Blog : Apple Pay Now Available at Over 2 Million U.S. Locations Tim Hardwick / MacRumors : Apple Pay Coming Soon to Crate & Barrel, Chick-fil-A and Au Bon Pain Chance Miller / 9to5Mac : Apple Pay now accepted at 2M locations, rolling out to Chick-Fil-A, Zappos, & more soon MacNN : Apple Pay now available at two million locations worldwide Nate Swanner / The Next Web : Apple Pay now accepted at over 2 million retail locations Adam Westlake / SlashGear : Apple Pay hits 2 million accepted locations worldwide Killian Bell / TechnoBuffalo : Apple reaches 2 million locations, more coming soon AppleInsider : Apple Pay accepted at more than 2M locations, coming to Chik-fil-A, other stores soon Chris Barylick / O'Grady's PowerPage : Apple Pay now supported at approximately two million locations, Chick-Fil-A, Zappos come on board Rajesh Pandey / iPhone Hacks : Apple Pay now supported at over 2 million retail locations; Crate & barrel and other retailers rolling out support Joseph Keller / iMore : Apple Pay now accepted at two million locations; coming soon to Zappos, Chick-fil-A, and more Jesse Hollington / iLounge : Apple Pay reaches 2 million retail locations Buster Hein / Cult of Mac : Apple Pay hits 2 million locations as Chick-fil-A and more jump aboard Dave Mark / The Loop : Apple Pay now accepted in more than two million retail locations
Context & Ripple Effects
This milestone caps a year of deliberate footprint-building: Apple had already pushed Apple Pay beyond staffed registers into 200,000 vending machines, kiosks, and paid-parking terminals, then locked up the small-merchant side with the PayAnywhere reader deal covering 300K locations — with the next reader generation sold exclusively through Apple Stores. Hitting 2 million US retail locations, with Crate & Barrel, Chick-fil-A, Zappos, and Au Bon Pain queued up, means the wallet now covers mainstream national retail, not just early adopters.
The arc that follows confirms this was the inflection point: Apple's VP Jennifer Bailey would later claim acceptance at one out of every two US stores, and by 2019 the wallet reached 74 of the top 100 US merchants including Target and Taco Bell.
First-order effects
- Crate & Barrel, Chick-fil-A, Zappos, and Au Bon Pain commit to NFC terminal upgrades ahead of launch, while the 1,000-plus US card issuers already on Apple Pay get their credentials accepted at a materially larger share of where their customers shop.
Second-order effects
- Reader and terminal vendors now compete for Apple's endorsement rather than just bank contracts — PayAnywhere's exclusive Apple Store distribution shows hardware makers treating Apple Pay compatibility as a sales channel in itself.
- Holdout national chains face rising opportunity cost: once acceptance passes the 2M-location mark, every major competitor of the newly signed chains has customers expecting tap-to-pay at checkout.
Third-order effects
- If the trajectory holds — half of US stores by 2018, three-quarters of the top 100 merchants by 2019 — wallet acceptance stops being a retailer differentiator and becomes default checkout infrastructure, shifting negotiating leverage in payments toward whoever controls the device at the point of sale.
The trend: US retail payments are consolidating around device-based wallets, with Apple converting its iPhone install base into near-universal point-of-sale acceptance within a few years of launch.