Apple Pay By the Survey

The Internet is good for many things – not the least of which is numbers. Want to know how many people are living Peoria right now? The Internet has your back (~116,000). Need to know Avogadro’s number? No need to find a chemist – Google can tell you (6.0221413e+23)

The Internet has pretty much destroyed the old problem of limited access to data – and created a whole new one – too much data without context. The World Wide Web is awash with facts and figures – the problem is not all figures tell the right story. You know the old adage – that there are three kinds of lies, lies, damn lies and statistics? That’s a nod to the fact that one can use numbers in just about any way to make a point. And, thanks to Google and Sir Tim Berners Lee’s invention of the World Wide Web, a survey a year ago of 50 redheaded women between the ages of 25 and 30 who when asked about buying shoes, say that they only buy red ones, turns into a “new finding” about how Millennial women now overwhelmingly express a preference for red shoes.

This, of course, is an exaggeration to make an important point. And, that is the importance of understanding the details and associated rigor with which surveys and data and results are done.

And that brings us to Apple Pay.

This week’s contribution to the growing Apple Pay data set is a new survey released by 451 Research entitled “Apple Pay Outperforming PayPal in Mobile Payments.”

Here is its conclusion.

“Our latest survey shows planned use of Apple Pay has been on an upward trajectory since it became available six months ago – with the service helping to spark consumer demand for mobile payment technologies,” said Andy Golub, Survey Research Director for 451 Research. “Although consumer perceptions of security remain an issue, the results point to marked improvements in this area.”

But what we don’t really know is who they asked – iPhone 6 consumers, iPhone consumers – or just people on the street – and how they drew their conclusions, which are all over the Web now and undoubtedly in a slew of PowerPoint decks already.

Their results are also somewhat inconsistent with the results of the work InfoScout has done to track Apple Pay Transaction volume. They ask consumers who, in fact, own iPhone 6’s why, how and whether they use them for payment and why after leaving a store that accepts Apple Pay. Security is not an issue that ever comes up and in fact, consumers who use Apple Pay really like the experience. They just forget to use it since it is not available in enough of the places they shop to make it a habit, and offers nothing more than payment, at least today, to make consumers go through the trouble of remembering.

The timing of these findings is also interesting given PayPal’s announcement of its Q1 performance yesterday, which do seem to show PayPal with a bit of the mobile payments wind at its back. PayPal gained 3.6 million new active accounts in Q1, an increase of 11 percent, to 165 million registered accounts, processed more than 1 billion transactions in the quarter, which is an increase of 24 percent and saw customer engagement spike as PayPal transactions per active account increased to 23 and monetization per active account jumped to $49.

Perhaps 451 Research’s conclusions about Apple Pay sparking momentum for mobile payments is right – and has helped drive interest in consumers using PayPal!

But as positive as this is, pun intended, PayPal’s performance and Apple Pay’s is a bit of an Apples and Oranges comparison. Apple Pay survey data, at least for the most part, is about measuring in-store usage, mostly, and PayPal is about online/mobile mostly. Neither PayPal nor Apple Pay have been successful at igniting mobile payments at the physical point of sale for all of the reasons that we’ve been writing about forever now. It’s just hard, and takes time and merchant initiative to enable it.

But there’s conflicting data on Apple Pay usage, and this is not an uncommon issue – especially in discussion of Apple Pay. One set of data says one thing – and a different set of data indicates something entirely other. In late 2014 during the holiday rush, something similar happened. InfoScout released a report that indicated Apple Pay was fizzling with consumers, while ITG put out a report that indicated it was positively sizzling.

So what’s happening? Damn lies and damn statistics? Not quite. Taking a closer look at the new 451 Research study and a handful of the most popular ones released before it, it emerges that everyone seems to be reporting honestly – on different topics.

Specifically, all the researchers are gathering the data differently — targeting different groups, asking different questions and measuring different things. Some studies – like InfoScout’s – measure actual use by counting receipts and asking iPhone 6 users who could use their phones in a store that accepted it why they didn’t. Other studies – like ITG or Phoenix Marketing’s rely on consumers reporting on their use habits – and it’s not clear that all of those consumers are all iPhone 6 users. And some – like the 451 Research data do no actually report on use at all – that study that boldly finds that Apple Pay is dusting PayPal does not actually contain a single piece of data on consumer use – instead it focuses on consumers’ intended use in the future.

So, in order to at least lay it all out there so that you can see it all for yourself and then decide how or if to use the data in your next PowerPoint presentation, take a look at our pretty chart to find out who asked who what, and when and what they reported.