Apple Pay in Korea sees 26 million transactions in first month

Apple’s brand identity is resolute

Korea has said a big ‘annyeong’ to Apple Pay, with over 25.8 million transactions made using Apple’s mobile payment service since launch March 11.

Apple Pay gets users, convinces retailers

The news was revealed by Apple Pay’s current Korean partner, Hyundai Card.

The latter company also confirmed that as a result of the launch of Apple Pay in the nation, small and medium-sized merchants have increasingly put NFC payment terminals in place.

The adoption of these terminals at retail matters. Not only does the availability of mobile payments help stimulate use of them, but it also accelerates adoption of other digital payment systems. In this case, once again, Apple seems to be the bellwether.

Before the Apple Pay launch, just 60,000 to 70,000 of 2.9 million stores in Korea had installed the necessary equipment. What Hyundai seems to be saying is that this number has increased quite fast – Apple Pay was used in payments at over 108,000 merchants, it said. That’s a significant increase. “An increasing number of small businesses are voluntarily adopting Apple Pay,” said Hyundai Card.

More local data

There are some other slices of data which may be of interest to Apple Pay nerds:

• 93% of transactions were made at offline retailers.
• 83,000 of the merchants taking Appole Pay were small or medium-sized srtores with under $2.28 million in annual sales.
• 22% of those taking Apple Pay weren’t even official launch partners – the services was used in cafes, pharmacies and restuarants, it said.
• And one Apple Pay user apparently accumulated 800 transactions.
• However, larger offline merchants such as Starbucks still account for the lion’s share of offline purchases. Payments were also made by travellers when abroad.

Hyundai Card is at present Apple’s only Apple Pay partner in Korea.

It has experienced super rapid adoption since March, with the number of new Hyundai Card users increasing 75% as iPhone users rushed to sign up for the card. This also sparked a rapid increase in the number of merchants deploying card equipment.

Apple Pay will continue to expand

A Korea Herald report tells us three other major local card issuers – Shinhan Card, KB Kookmin Card and BC card now want to support the payments service. And may begin doing so in September or October.

The move to Korea is just the latest shift as Apple continues its work to support and profit from new economic zones. Providing payment services is a completely viable next step for a corporation of its size, but why stop there? The lack of banking and credit infrastructure in some nations means still nearly a billion people worldwide lack access to financial services, which may empower local economies. And, of course, in the meantime, Apple continues to have the world’s most widely discussed mobile payments system.

Please follow me on Mastodon, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.