Mobile payments may have at one point been a feature for the future, that time however has passed and perhaps we may finally start to see more of a mass adoption from retailers. Even though there were a handful of places that had accepted mobile payments like Google Wallet for the past couple of years, it was by no means a real notable amount of businesses. Two of the more well known entities that had been taking payments from services like Google Wallet for years, Rite Aid and CVS, had also been accepting payments from the newly announced and released Apple Pay platform before ending support for them due to a decision to support the CurrentC platform instead.
Despite this decision perhaps being a tiny setback to NFC based payments like Google Wallet, mobile payments have still seen growth in the past couple of months, this includes Google Wallet, and it’s likely that the release of Apple Pay has to take some credit for giving Google Wallet a boost, however unintentional it may have been. A recent report from Ars Technica states that a source close to the matter mentions that NFC based payments increased at a rate of nearly twice the amount from before in just the last couple of months. Since Apple Pay’s launch over the past couple of months, new users have also increased by twice the amount, and weekly transactions are at a 50% increase rate.
The launch of an Apple branded NFC payment system giving rise to a mobile payment growth spurt probably shouldn’t surprise many people. Apple has a huge brand presence, and they have one hell of a marketing strategy. Any increased attention for Apple Pay is still raising awareness and spreading the word for NFC mobile payments as a whole, so it’s only natural that Google Wallet would also begin to receive more attention from more users. Customers that may have not been aware of the service, how it worked or where it was accepted prior to the past couple of months may now at least have some grasp on its existence, and with that may end up deciding to give the service a try. If more customers adopt the payment system even with the small amount of businesses that currently support it, perhaps other retailers will see the increased interest and begin to support the payment systems on their end. One can only hope.