Category: Featured News

Apple Pay has become a success in the United States

Apple has established success in the U.S. mobile payments market. The company has been fighting to find a foothold in the mobile payments space for some time, but successfully did so with the launch of its own payment service, called Apple Pay. The service was launched in late 2014 and adoption has been steadily growing throughout the United States since then. Apple Pay has won praise because of its security features and convenient nature, which has made it one of the most used mobile payments services in the country.

Report highlights the growing power of Apple Pay

Piper Jaffray, and investment bank, has released statistics concerning the mobile payments market, showing that Apple is leading the way. The report from Piper Jaffray shows that approximately 20% of iPhone users have adopted Apple Pay. While the adoption of the payments service among iPhone users may seem low, the report notes that Apple Pay is the overwhelming share leader when it comes to point-of-sale mobile payments. The success that Apple has found has made it more attractive to banks, which are beginning to show more support for its payment services. In September, 515 banks were supporting Apple Pay. Now, however, more than 930 are supporting the service.

Apple expected to continue finding success in the mobile payments market

The report predicts that Apple Pay will continue to find success in the mobile payments market. Apple is planning to introduce new features that may secure this success. These features are rumored to include better support for loyalty programs, particularly those that have been put in place by large retailers. Apple Pay may also find success in other countries as Apple attempts to break into new mobile payments markets throughout the world.

Competition in other countries may prove fierce for Apple

Apple has faced strong competition in the mobile payments space. Google, Samsung and several other companies have become involved in this sector and have been vying for the support of consumers and businesses alike. In other countries, Apple may find more ferocious competition, especially as foreign banks have shown relatively little interest in the company’s mobile payments service.

According to a recent report, approximately 620 million people in China use smartphone to go online.

A new official report from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) has said that around 620 million people in the country – about half of its population – use their mobile phones in order to access the web.

These figures were collected throughout last year and represented the statistics as of the end of December 2015.

This figure represents an increase of 63.03 million users of mobile phones for accessing the internet, last year. It is also a figure that represents about 90.1 percent of the total number of internet users in China, which is estimated to be 688 million. This helps to further illustrate the importance of mobile devices as a driver in the internet user population in China. Smartphones have allowed the country to achieve the highest internet using population in the world, by far, said the CNNIC.

That said, it is important to note that the users of those mobile phones experience the same online restrictions.

The Chinese government imposes strict controls over the content that is permitted online. Despite the fact that e-commerce is among the core components of its efforts to convert its economy into one that is more consumer demand based, these regulations remain. In fact, the system currently in place has been called the “Great Firewall of China”, blocking out any content it has determined to be politically sensitive.

The CNNIC report showed that there are about 127 million people in China whose internet access is exclusively over mobile phones. Broad efforts have been made within the country in order to help to boost the internet coverage and, as a result, public services, the standard of living and e-commerce have all benefitted.

The statistics offered by the report have predicted that the number of people who are using mobile health, mobile wallets or online education over smartphones had reached the 152 million, 358 million and 110 million mark, respectively, last year. Furthermore, an estimated 96.6 million people in the country – that is, one in every 14 people in China – used a mobile device in order to call a cab in 2015.