NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Apple again reported a tripling of transactions for its payments service, Apple Pay, during its fiscal quarter ending in September, while noting other achievements. But the growth is believed to be off of a relatively low base, and four years after launching the payments service, Apple is still not releasing detailed numbers about its transactions.
While progress for the NFC-enabled payments service is undeniable, Apple during an earnings call late last week did not follow the precedent it set three months ago of releasing at least a rough number of transactions. Instead, Apple went back to expressing transaction details in terms of growth only.
Apple CEO Tim Cook did single out Apple Pay among generators of Apple’s services revenue, during his prepared remarks following release of Apple’s high-flying fiscal fourth-quarter earnings Thursday. In saying that transaction numbers tripled as compared with the fiscal fourth quarter of 2017, Cook added that “to put that into perspective, Apple Pay generated significantly more transactions than even PayPal Mobile with over four times the growth rate.” He also called Apple Pay “by far the number-one mobile-contactless payment service worldwide.”