Apple Pay Adoption Slated for Nearly 50% of Top 100 U.S. Merchants

By October 2015, US retailers need to upgrade their credit card terminals to accept cards with microchips, and the new terminal will also (in most cases) support contactless payments, which makes them Apple Pay compatible. Still, Apple has a long way to go until it can count all of the 100 top retailers on its list of partners. The company, however, remains positive: Half of them will support Apple Pay by the end of the year, a company spokesperson told Reuters.

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“We’ve spoken to all of the top 100 merchants in the U.S., and about half will accept Apple Pay this year, with many more the following year,” a company spokesperson recently told Reuters.

The news outlet, however, decided to conduct its own investigation into the matter, surveyed retailers, and found surprising answers. Interestingly, some retailers have doubts about Apple Pay.

After surveying 98 of the top 100 retailers on the National Retails Federation’s list, Reuters found that less than 25% currently accept Apple Pay. What may spark interest and cast some shadow over Apple’s positive forecast for 2015 is that, according to the Reuters survey, 66% of the top merchants have no plans to support Apple Pay this year. Only four companies say they will join Apple’s platform in 2015. That’s as bit far from Apple’s forecast of 50% of the top merchants on board by the end of the year.

It is worth noting here that those accepting Apple Pay say customers are happy with the experience. But there are several roadblocks Apple needs to remove: First, the CurrentC platform, which won’t allow its partners to accept other mobile wallets, and secondly, the cost of the terminal and computer upgrades necessary to run an Apple Pay–compatible system.

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