Japanese IT journalist Sachiko Watatani who writes for MyNavi posted a fascinating 2 part (1 and 2) iPhone user survey regarding Apple Pay. There are many interesting details but the big summary points are:
- Only 27% of iPhone users who can use Apple Pay use it
- 50% don’t use Apple Pay but are interested in using it
- 22% don’t use Apple Pay and don’t care about using it
Other important data points: 34.4% use Apple Pay daily, 24.9% use Apple Pay every 2~3 days, 37% use it for public transportation, 69% use it for convenience store purchases. Unfortunately the survey questions did not make any distinctions between different card types like Apple Pay Suica which is stored value with Express Card functionality, and regular Apple Pay credit cards. The survey only addressed “Apple Pay” use.
Comparing results with the earlier MMD Labo report is frustrating because the surveys address different user sets with different questions. The only thing worth comparing is the “don’t use mobile payments but am interested” category. The MMD figure was 29.9%. The much higher interest in Apple Pay is probably due to Suica and the ubiquity of transit IC payment store options. Other noteworthy comparison tidbits from MMD are mobile payments for transit use @ 63.5% and convenience store purchases @ 59.1%.
Watatani san was confused about the low transit use result and thought it might be due to PASMO commuters answering the survey. I think she is partly right. One of the biggest findings from earlier this year was that Apple Pay Suica use is highly regional because the initial uptake is closely linked to commuter passes. Getting all the transit IC cards and commuter passes on mobile is something that JR East and Sony are already working on.
The good news for Apple is that 50% of Japanese iPhone users who don’t use Apple Pay are interested in using it. The bad news is that Apple has to give them better reasons to use it. A good starting point would be the items I outlined earlier: extend Apple Pay Japan prepaid card support while working to lower merchant side transaction fees, and for goodness sake issue a iPhone X Suica problem repair program.