Apple Pay To Have Most Customers: Juniper

With digital payments starting to grow in the U.S. Apple Inc. (AAPL) stands to benefit the most from increased usage of Apple Pay, its digital payment platform.

That’s if market research firm Juniper Research’s new estimates prove true. The researcher expects in-store contactless payments to hit $2 trillion by 2020, accounting for 15% of all point of sale transactions. The market is expected to surpass the $1 trillion mark for the first time this year.

Among the players that will drive the market, which includes Apple Pay, Samsung Electronics’ Samsung Pay, Alphabet’s (GOOG) Google Pay and other OEM pay wallets, Apple will account for one in two digital payment users around the globe, Juniper predicted. It expects combined the digital payment wallets to hit 450 million by 2020. “We believe that growth over the next 5 years will continue to be dominated by offerings from the major OEM players,” said Juniper research analyst Nitin Bhas in a press release highlighting the new research. (See more: Google Launches Google Pay to Rival Apple.)

Contactless Card Still Dominating

While digital payment apps will become a larger part of the contactless payment market, Juniper did note that contactless transactions will continue to be dominated by card payments, the preferred contactless payment method in Europe, the Far East and China. The Far East and China account for close to 55% of global contactless card transaction values, noted Juniper. Digital wallets will represent more than $300 billion of the contactless payment transactions by 2020, making up 15% of the total contactless in-store transactions, Juniper predicted.

Apple Pay An Opportunity To Grow Services Revenue

As Apple faces lower than expected sales of its iPhone in key markets it has been expanding its services businesses including Apple Pay. While the U.S. has been slow to accept contactless payments, the technology is starting to take off. In addition to expanding Apple Pay into more markets, the Cupertino, California-based technology powerhouse is reportedly teaming up with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) to launch a credit card in 2019 that will feature Apple Pay. Not only would the card boost the adoption of Apple Pay, but also help Apple garner higher transaction fees if the card is used for purchases. According to a recent report by the Wall Street Journal, a digital wallet payment through an iPhone typically yields 0.15% transaction revenue for Apple regardless of the credit card linked to the wallet. With the Goldman Sachs/Apple credit card, it could double that and drive Apple’s service revenue higher.