Apple Pay had 1B+ transactions in Q3, and will launch in Germany and at US-based CVS and 7-11 stores later this year
Juli Clover / MacRumors :
Context & Ripple Effects
CVS spent 2016 building its own wallet — CVS Pay rolled out across iOS and Android starting in the Northeast — precisely so its registers wouldn't have to accept Apple's. Accepting Apple Pay reverses that stance at the point of sale. The Germany launch closes a gap too: by late 2018 Apple had brought the wallet there with 15 supported banks and services, four years after the US debut.
First-order effects
- CVS and 7-Eleven shoppers can tap an iPhone at checkout instead of loading a store-specific app, putting Apple's wallet directly against CVS Pay on CVS's own terminals.
- German banks and merchants gain NFC payment support from Apple for the first time at scale, expanding the wallet beyond its US core.
Second-order effects
- Other large US retailers that built proprietary wallets as a moat face the same calculus CVS just made — maintaining a standalone app gets harder when the category leader accepts the platform wallet.
- Card networks and issuers benefit as Apple Pay volume grows; earlier data showed it already accounted for two of every three contactless transactions on Visa, MasterCard, and American Express.
Third-order effects
- Retailer-owned wallets are structurally losing to platform wallets: the economics favor whoever controls the secure element and the default tap gesture, pushing merchants back toward interchange-based acceptance rather than closed-loop apps.
- If acceptance keeps widening into convenience and drugstore — following earlier pushes into vending machines, kiosks, and paid parking — contactless becomes the default at small-ticket retail, squeezing cash and proprietary loyalty-card flows.
The trend: US retail is consolidating around platform wallets like Apple Pay as merchant-built alternatives such as CVS Pay cede the checkout.