Apple Pay to Take on E-Commerce Giants
Apple is about to make it easier for its users to shop online. Apple Pay “soon” will work to make purchases on Websites and not just at physical stores and in certain apps, the company said this week at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. The move will put Apple Pay in direct competition with PayPal, Amazon and the networks’ online payments services for the loyalties of online shoppers.
Consumers who use Apple Pay and want to make online purchases will have to do so through Apple’s Safari browser using iPhones, iPads or Mac computers. Retailers need to offer Apple Pay as a checkout option; so far, Target, Etsy and United Airlines are among the companies saying they will do so.
Apple Pay’s fight with PayPal, in particular, promises to be a tough one. That’s because PayPal has at least 170 million active consumer accounts, along with 14 million active merchant accounts. And PayPal’s mobile business is growing: Since beginning at under $50 million in 2006, mobile payments volume shot up, cracking the $1 billion mark in 2011—and the $10 billion plateau just a year later.
Apple Pay, launched in 2014, has about 12 million regular monthly users, according to mobile research firm Crone Consulting. But Apple Pay is growing by some 1 million users a week, according to Apple CEO Tim Cook.
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