Apple Pay Threatens Dominance Of PayPal

After posting monster growth in 2020 and 2021, in large part from the pandemic's boost for online shopping and digital transactions, PayPal Holdings pumped the brakes in 2022, with total payment volume (TPV) and revenue rising 8% and 9%, respectively, a sharp slowdown from the prior two years, but the stock has taken a beating, down 76% from its all-time high, Neil Patel reported for Motley Fool.

Photo Insert: Apple's advantage over PayPal is that the former now counts a whopping 2 billion active devices worldwide.

At first glance, it might seem like there's nothing getting in the way of fintech leader PayPal. It processed $1.36 trillion in TPV last year, and the payments platform has 435 million active accounts today.

Even more impressive is that PayPal's checkout feature is available at 79% of the top 1,500 retailers in North America and Europe.

But Apple Pay, which was launched in late 2014, is becoming a formidable opponent. It is the tech giant's mobile payment service that lets users add their debit or credit cards to their digital wallets on their devices to pay at millions of merchants, whether in-store or online.

At the time of launch, CEO Tim Cook made it clear that he wanted a piece of the gargantuan payments sector.

Apple Pay has made remarkable progress. It commands a 28% acceptance rate at the 1,500 largest merchants in North America and Europe, second only to PayPal. What's more, Apple claims that 85% of US retailers accept Apple Pay.

That near-ubiquity is outstanding for a service that hasn't been available for even a decade.

Apple's advantage over PayPal is that the former now counts a whopping 2 billion active devices worldwide. And while Apple Pay is built into only four types of products -- the iPhone, Apple Watch, Mac, and iPad -- the potential for higher usage is certainly there.

Moreover, iPhone users are generally higher-income earners than their Android counterparts. This means they have more spending power, a boon for Apple Pay, which earns 0.15% from each transaction.

WEEKLY FEATURE : MVP Group Keeps Lights On During Pandemic