Research: Apple Pay makes up about 5% of global card transactions and is on pace to double that share by 2025
Future of Finance — New technology is upending everything in finance. — Apple's mobile wallet is gobbling up a growing chunk of card payments around the world.
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple Pay's climb to a measurable slice of global card payments is the payoff of a multi-year install-base conversion. Volume was already up 450% YoY after Apple's 2016 international expansion (transaction volume grew 450% YoY), and Cook claimed 75% of US contactless payments back in 2016 (75% of US contactless payments).
The user funnel kept widening since then: global users went from an estimated 127M in early 2018 to 215M by mid-2018, then to a surveyed 507M by September 2020 — roughly half the iPhone base (507M users worldwide). The new research translates that adoption into spend: about 5% of all global card transactions, on pace to double by 2025.
First-order effects
- Card issuers and networks now process a growing share of transactions through Apple's wallet rather than plastic or bank apps, making Apple Pay's ~5% share — and its path to double digits — a direct line item in interchange and routing volumes.
- For Apple, each point of wallet share deepens engagement on hardware it already sold, with the remaining headroom concentrated in the half of iPhone owners who have not yet activated the wallet.
Second-order effects
- As activation saturates — later tracking shows 75% of US iPhones activated and 90% of US retailers accepting the wallet (75% of US iPhones activated) — growth shifts from signing up users to increasing how often existing ones tap, putting pressure on merchant terminal coverage outside the US.
- Banks lose direct control of the payment moment as the wallet becomes the default interface on iOS, shifting negotiating leverage toward whoever owns the front end of the transaction.
Third-order effects
- If the doubling trajectory holds, wallets move from convenience feature to core payment rail, positioning device makers as gatekeepers between consumers and card networks — a structure regulators and issuers would increasingly have to negotiate with rather than around.
The trend: Mobile wallets are converting smartphone install bases into durable shares of global card payments, with Apple turning iPhone distribution into a seat at the center of the transaction flow.