Apple Pay has spent 11 years teaching consumers to tap their phones at checkout, but the bigger story may be how many rivals are now benefiting from that lesson.
A PYMNTS Intelligence report, “Apple Pay @11: Usage Is Up, but Competitors are Gaining Ground,” shows that Apple Pay is still the best-known and most-used mobile wallet, but the market around it is moving fast. Based on a survey of 3,339 U.S. consumers, the study finds that Apple Pay in-store usage has doubled over the past year, while mobile wallet use overall has more than doubled.
The result is a more mature wallet market, one that gives Apple more volume but also gives Google Pay, PayPal, Cash App, Venmo and others a better shot at the checkout relationship.
Apple’s advantage is still substantial. It owns the iPhone experience, sits inside a device used by nearly 60% of consumers and is accepted by 85% of merchants, according to the report. That should give Apple a powerful path to growth.
Yet the data also shows how hard consumer behavior can be to change. Apple Pay accounts for only 10% of eligible in-person purchases and under 5% of transactions overall. Its estimated in-store sales volume rose to $450 billion from $268 billion this year, but physical cards still dominate how consumers pay.
The competitive opening is simple. Consumers are warming up to mobile wallets, but they are not all choosing the same one.
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- 16% of consumers said they used Apple Pay in stores in the last week, twice the share that did so in 2024. Apple Pay is clearly gaining more regular users as mobile checkout becomes more familiar.
- 31% of consumers used a mobile wallet in a store in the last seven days, up from 14% in August 2024. That surge helps Apple, but it also broadens the market for rivals that can win specific use cases, rewards moments or platform loyalties.
- Google Pay’s in-store use rose to 8.9% from 3.5% last year, while PayPal reached 12.8% from 7.3% and Cash App reached 10% from 5.9%. Apple Pay remains ahead at 15.9%, but its lead is no longer the only story.
For Apple, the optimistic read is that the wallet category is finally becoming a mainstream habit. Consumers are not just experimenting because a terminal accepts tap-to-pay.
They are returning because wallets feel fast, easy and secure. That gives Apple room to grow beyond early adopters, especially as millennials make mobile wallets part of everyday shopping and even baby boomers increase usage from a smaller base.
The challenge is that Apple helped build a market that competitors can now enter with sharper hooks. PayPal has a deep online payments brand. Cash App brings stored balances and peer-to-peer payment habits. Google Pay has Android distribution. Retailers and commerce platforms have their own incentives to keep shoppers inside their ecosystems.
The report also shows that wallets are changing the surface of checkout more than the underlying economics of payment. Debit and credit cards still fund many wallet transactions, and their overall shares have held roughly steady. Cash is the clearest loser, with mobile wallets nearly catching it for consumers’ most recent in-store purchase.
That means the next phase of competition may not be about replacing cards. It may be about who controls the moment before the card is used. Apple has a head start, but the checkout screen is getting crowded.
