2 PAYMENT METHOD PROFILES: DIGITAL WALLETS
U.S. Mobile Wallet Adoption by the Numbers: • PayPal ranked first with a U.S. audience reach of 85%. 384
• The number of merchants who accept PayPal for online payments was the highest in the United States with roughly one-third of global websites that offer PayPal located in the United States. However, PayPal was used more often for online payments in both Germany and Mexico than in the United States. 385 • According to a February 2022 survey of online payment users in the United States, 32 percent of respondents had used Venmo (parent company PayPal) in the past 12 months and in the fourth quarter of 2024 total payment volume showed a year-on-year growth of about 10%. 386 • Over 30% of U.S. consumers surveyed indicated they had used Google Pay in a POS setting between July 2023 and June 2024, while over 30% also said they used Google Pay for online payments. 387 • It is estimated that over 500 million people globally activated Apple Pay on their iPhones while roughly one out of 10 Apple Pay users is from the United States. 388 • 58 percent of respondents from the United States indicated they had used Cash App in a POS setting between July 2023 and June 2024. 389 While digital wallet usage in the U.S. is now on the rise, it has taken longer for U.S. consumers to adopt digital wallets than in countries like Brazil and India. This could be based on a variety of factors, including user experience, merchant adoption and other key considerations. One catalyst for an increase in proximity mobile payments, such as NFC, appears to be an uptick during and after COVID. 390 Some reports have recently speculated that consumer concerns about security, and uncertainty about fraud liability, may be driving slower adoption with findings that some digital apps monitor fraud on their own while others rely on issuers and networks affiliated with the underlying payment product. 391 One thing is noticeable, the digital wallet environment in the U.S. has not been a straightforward path – companies like Square have iterated on several products, including Square Wallet, Square Register, and others before landing on the customer experience we know as CashApp today. 392 There is still an open path for innovation in the digital wallet space and most regulatory controls in the U.S. are centered around the underlying payment products, which are governed by federal and state laws with the former covering card and bank account payments and the latter stored value money transmission. There have been some recent attempts by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to exercise oversight of tech companies providing digital wallet services, but these initiatives have been largely rolled back under the current President Trump Administration. 393
108
Powered by FlippingBook