Apple Pay overtook Starbucks as the top mobile payment app in US in 2018 with 27.7M users, will grow to 30.3M users in 2019 representing a 47.3% market share
Nearly 30% of US smartphone users will use a mobile payment app … For the first time, a generic mobile payment app is more popular …
Context & Ripple Effects
The crossover closes a race that eMarketer had been tracking for two years: its May 2018 count still had Starbucks ahead with 20.7M US mobile payment users versus Apple Pay's 19.9M. The reversal is structural rather than a blip — a generic wallet that works at any terminal has displaced the largest single-merchant app.
The trajectory behind the flip was already visible: Loup Ventures' earlier estimate put Apple Pay adoption at roughly a quarter to nearly a third of the active US iPhone base by mid-2018 (38M active US users), so the 27.7M user figure and 47.3% share projection extend a curve, not start one.
First-order effects
- Starbucks loses its standing as the most-used US mobile payment app — its closed-loop rewards wallet is now the challenger to Apple's platform wallet rather than the incumbent.
- Apple gains the default position in US tap-to-pay just as its wallet reaches projected parity with nearly half the mobile payment market (30.3M users on 47.3% share), strengthening its hand with banks and terminal networks.
Second-order effects
- Rival generic wallets — Google Pay among them, which trailed both leaders in the 2017 counts — face pressure to match Apple's distribution through preinstalled default placement rather than app downloads.
- Large merchants running proprietary payment apps must weigh loyalty economics against friction: Starbucks' model now competes against a one-tap flow that requires no dedicated app, squeezing the case for store-specific wallets.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, payments consolidate around OS-level wallets owned by device makers, shifting interchange data and customer relationships from merchants toward Apple — the same trajectory later visible in estimates of roughly half the global iPhone base using Apple Pay by late 2020.
- Merchant closed-loop apps survive only where their rewards economics beat the platform wallet's convenience, pushing loyalty programs toward integration with Apple Pay rather than competition against it.
The trend: Consumer payments are consolidating into preinstalled OS-level wallets controlled by device makers, displacing both bank apps and merchant-specific payment programs as the default interface.