Apple Pay outperforms its main competitors for ‘Brand Love’

Apple Pay is the top mobile payment solution outperforming its direct competitors Google Pay (or ‘G’ Pay) and Samsung Pay in our Top 100 most loved financial services brands report.

Although it is a platform that is only available to Apple device users, Apple Pay has impressively high levels of brand affinity among the whole market.

Overall, Apple Pay sits alongside long established, multi-national payment solution providers PayPal and Visa as it places fourth in our Top 100 leader board.

Apple launched its own mobile payment platform, Apple Pay in 2014 and ever since the service has rapidly grown in popularity. Although it is a platform that is only available to Apple device users, Apply Pay has impressively high levels of brand affinity among the whole market.

Why are Apple Pay and the Android equivalent mobile payment solutions any better than a contactless bank card? It is the security they offer the user by requiring authentication to make a payment. Within the security of the Apple Wallet, you can store your card details securely and these can be accessed through the Apple Pay function. With a quick unlock of your phone using Face or Touch ID, you can use your iPhone or Apple Watch as an alternative to a contactless card in store (with the added benefit of no £45 spending limit) or pay easily online without entering card details. The Apple Pay slogan “Cashless made effortless” encompasses the ease the service provides the user; as long as you have your mobile, you do not have to struggle to pull your card out of your wallet again.

It is perhaps this ease and ability to make near instant payments that makes Apple Pay so popular among Millennials and even more so among Gen-Z. These tech-savvy generations favour slick user experience and speed of service at the tip of their fingers and Apple Pay services this need. It is then understandable why Apple Pay scores highly for BrandLove among younger generations.

BrandVue data shows that 47% of Apple Pay users “love” Apple Pay

Between May-July 2020 when the UK was slowly stepping out of its first COVID-19 lockdown, we saw ‘love’ for Apple Pay increase even further. The pandemic led to more hospitality and retail businesses only accepting card or contactless payments as the perception of physical cash is that it is ‘dirty’. It is therefore unsurprising to see ‘love’ levels for Apple Pay increase during this period given that, more than ever, users appreciated the value in the brand and the contactless services they provide.

But why is Apple Pay so much more loved across all generations, compared to its rivals G Pay and Samsung Pay? Various sources of market share data suggest that in the UK, there are marginally more Android users than there are Apple users. Yet interestingly, G Pay (available to all those with Android devices) and Samsung Pay (only available to Samsung users) have considerably lower ‘awareness’ levels than Apple Pay. These two brands also score lower than Apple Pay for love and on our Top 100 leader board place sixth and sixteenth, respectively.

This is potentially a result of dilution, given that Samsung users (which make up the majority of Android users in the UK), have the option of using both Samsung Pay and G Pay. Samsung users have to make an active decision to download their preferred mobile payment app which potentially adds a layer to the set-up process. This means there is not a monopoly in the same way that Apple Pay has over Apple users. In fact, the set-up process on an Apple device is far more streamlined as customers are actively prompted to set up Apple Pay when they set up their new Apple device. This has created a halo effect of the Apple brand, which means awareness and preference for Apple Pay are much higher, despite more people in the UK using Android mobiles.

What also might give Apple Pay a brand advantage is that the long-established bank Barclays does not support G Pay or Samsung Pay. Instead, the bank prefers Android users to install their very own Barclays App to make contactless payments creating even more choice for the customer.

But what is clear is that Apple Pay has the brand advantage in this market and has won the hearts of its users.

Find out more about BrandVue Financial Services.

To download our full Top 100 Most Loved Financial Services Brands report, click here.