Brief:

• The portion of online merchants that accept Apple Pay and Google Pay declined this year, according to a Q1 survey from fraud detection platform Kount. Online merchant support for Apple Pay dropped to 35% this year from 48% in 2017, while Google Pay (previously called Android Pay) fell to 25% from 38%.
• Amex Express Checkout had the biggest gain in merchant support, nearly doubling acceptance to 16% from 9% of merchants, while PayPal increased to 64% from 48%. The share of merchants who accept Samsung Pay, Visa Checkout, MasterPass and Chase Pay remain constant. Chinese payment platform AliPay was accepted by 10% of merchants surveyed.
• Merchants cited maintaining ease of use and the ability to detect fraudulent order attempts as the top challenges for e-commerce companies. Still, nearly one-third of merchants surveyed said the mobile channel will represent at least half of their total revenue by 2020.

Insight:

The drop in usage for Apple Pay and Google Pay is particularly notable, even if the reasons for the declines aren't completely understood. Since launching Apple Pay in 2014, Apple has seen major retailers like Walmart forgo its platform for their own proprietary mobile payment tools. Meanwhile, the growing support for PayPal and Amex Express Checkout signals that some payment processors are still seeing success making in-roads with retailers — just not the two systems by tech giants Google and Apple.

In the past, retailers had resisted using Apple Pay because of low customer demand for mobile payment options, a lack of access to data generated from those transactions and the high cost of devices and software needed to facilitate the payments, a 2015 Reuters survey found.

The U.S. has seen a slower adoption rate of mobile wallets than other countries, especially China, as many Americans have long-established buying habits using cash and credit or debit cards. Cards are accepted virtually everywhere, including farmer's markets and craft fairs that didn't historically accept anything but cash. This made using cards easy to use, so there hasn't been much of a motivator for consumers to desire a mobile payment option.

As for sharing consumer data, Apple claims it's very mindful of personal privacy, which has become a more significant issue for consumers after revelations about Facebook's data-sharing practices this year triggered a worldwide backlash against the social network. However, some consumers may still be wary of the tech giant and instead put their trust in bank-backed cards or payment options such as Amex Express Checkout.