Apple Pay reached 15.9% of US consumers, up 85%, while Google Pay reached 8.9%, up 324%, per PYMNTS Intelligence survey data published by EMARKETER.

The two wallets have stopped competing in the same field. Apple Pay still owns the US in-store tap; Google Pay’s mass-market scale now sits on India’s UPI rails.

Key Takeaways

15.9% of US consumers used Apple Pay, and 8.9% used Google Pay per PYMNTS Intelligence, with mobile-wallet in-store use at 31.2% overall.
Roughly three in four US iPhone users have activated Apple Pay, and 55.8 million US consumers made an in-store payment with Apple Pay in April 2023, according to the CFPB.
Google Pay processed 7.5 billion UPI transactions in India in December 2025, holding 34.64% of UPI volume per NPCI data reported by Angel One.
Mobile phones were used for 23% of all US payments in 2024, including 11% of in-person non-bill payments and 45% of remote payments per the Federal Reserve 2025 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice.
Apple agreed to open iOS NFC access to rival wallets across the European Economic Area for 10 years under the European Commission’s July 11, 2024, settlement.

Editor’s Choice

Apple charges card issuers 0.15% on each credit transaction and $0.005 on each debit transaction, and analysts estimated Apple Pay issuer-fee revenue at over $1.9 billion in 2022.
Over 5,100 card issuers had agreements with Apple as of 2023, per the CFPB.
Apple Pay in-store volume reached an estimated $450 billion in the trailing year, accounting for 6% of total US in-store purchases per PYMNTS Intelligence.
Apple Pay operates across approximately 84 countries and territories, with Europe (44 countries) the largest region.
Google Wallet is available in 86 countries for both Android and Wear OS, and Google Pay was sunset in June 2024 and folded into Google Wallet.
US proximity mobile payment users will reach 132.6 million by 2028, and transaction value will pass the $1 trillion milestone by 2027, per EMARKETER.
Roughly 41% of Americans say none of their typical weekly purchases are paid for using cash, up from 29% in 2018, per Pew Research Center.

In-store mobile-wallet adoption tripled in three years, and Apple Pay holds the leading consumer-reach share.
PYMNTS Intelligence found 31.2% of US consumers had used a mobile wallet in-store as of September 2024, nearly triple the rate three years earlier.
Apple Pay topped the per-wallet reach at 15.9%, ahead of PayPal at 12.8%, Cash App at 10%, and Google Pay at 8.9%.

Key finding: PYMNTS Intelligence puts Apple Pay at 15.9% of US consumers and Google Pay at 8.9% in 2025, but Google Pay’s 324% growth from 2023 dwarfs Apple Pay’s 85% climb, reflecting a smaller base catching up rather than a US share inversion.

Mobile-phone payments now account for almost a quarter of all US payment volume by count, but the in-person slice that Apple Pay and Google Pay fight over is smaller than the headline suggests.
The Federal Reserve’s 2025 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice found mobile phones were used for 23% of all US payments in 2024, 11% of in-person non-bill payments, and 45% of remote payments.
Consumers made an average of 11 payments per month with a mobile phone in 2024, up from 10 in 2023 and four in 2018.

Adults aged 18 to 24 were the heaviest mobile users, paying with their phones for 45% of all payments, according to the Federal Reserve.
The Diary of Consumer Payment Choice, prior to the 2024 edition, recorded a Mobile Payment App share of 6% of all US payments in 2023, split across contactless POS payments at tap-to-pay terminals and P2P transfers between consumers.

Recent Developments

May 2026: Google Pay’s UPI volume share fell to 32.9% in May 2026 from 33.5% in April 2026, the first time PhonePe plus Google Pay slipped below the 80% combined threshold per NPCI.
May 2026: Google Pay processed 759.8 Cr transactions in May 2026, up 3.1% from April’s 735.9 Cr total, while PhonePe handled 1,073.5 Cr transactions worth ₹14.67 Lakh Cr the same month.
2026: NPCI extended the 30% per-app UPI volume cap deadline to December 2026 after the proposal first surfaced in 2020.
December 2025: India’s UPI processed 21.63 billion transactions worth ₹27.97 lakh crore in December 2025 per NPCI, a monthly record at the time.
June 2024: Google Pay was sunset and replaced with Google Wallet per Google’s official support documentation.
July 2024: The Commission accepted Apple’s commitments to open iOS NFC across the European Economic Area, binding for 10 years, ending a four-year antitrust investigation that began in June 2020.

Apple Pay US Footprint and Spend Estimates

Apple Pay’s US footprint is the strongest of any single mobile wallet. The CFPB recorded an estimated 55.8 million US consumers who made an in-store payment using Apple Pay in April 2023, accounting for nearly half of iOS users, and roughly three in four US iPhone owners had activated the wallet at that point.
An estimated 130.1 million individuals use an iPhone at least once per month in the United States, setting the addressable ceiling for Apple Pay.

The smartphone ownership backdrop favors Apple: 55% of smartphones shipped in the US in Q2 2023 were Apple devices, with Samsung at 23% and remaining vendors in single digits.
More recently, PYMNTS Intelligence pegged Apple Pay’s in-store volume at an estimated $450 billion over the trailing year, equal to 6% of total US in-store purchases.

Is Apple Pay safer than Google Pay?

Both wallets use tokenization, meaning the merchant never sees the underlying card number; the security comparison is a wash on the rails. The structural difference is access scope: iOS only permits Apple Pay to use the NFC chip for tap-to-pay, while Android permits third-party wallets to use NFC directly per the CFPB. The Apple model concentrates the security surface in one wallet on iOS; the Android model spreads it across the user’s chosen wallet.

Google Pay US Reach

Google Pay’s US footprint runs roughly one-third the Apple Pay rate by spend and a smaller fraction by user count.
US consumers spent $65.2 billion at stores using Google Pay in 2022, up from $24.8 billion in 2021 and $39.89 billion in 2019, per CFPB-cited analyst estimates.
In 2021, there were an estimated 25 million Google Pay users in the United States, with expected growth of an additional 10.2 million users by 2025.

The Google Pay US number that matters most for any comparison is the user base, where Apple Pay’s iPhone conversion rate runs well ahead of Google Pay’s Android conversion rate.

How many people use Google Pay?

US Google Pay reach trails Apple Pay materially. PYMNTS Intelligence put Google Pay at 8.9% of US consumers in 2025, roughly a third lower than PayPal’s 12.8% and well behind Apple Pay’s 15.9%. India is where Google Pay’s reach scales: Google Pay handled 7.5 billion UPI transactions in December 2025, a single-month total that dwarfs every published US Google Pay figure.

Apple Pay Issuer Fees and Revenue Estimates

Apple is the only mobile wallet that collects an issuer fee on every NFC transaction.
The CFPB documented that Apple charges card issuers 0.15% on each credit transaction and half a penny ($0.005) on each debit transaction.
Apple does not publicly report this revenue, but analysts cited by the CFPB estimated the issuer-fee line at over $1.9 billion in 2022, driven by the $199 billion of US in-store spend that same year.

Apple’s issuer ecosystem was extensive even at the report’s publication: over 5,100 card issuers held agreements with Apple as of 2023. Google Pay charges card issuers nothing comparable for NFC use; the two wallets earn money in opposite ways across Visa network rails and ads-and-services pull-through.

By the numbers: The CFPB pegged Apple Pay issuer-fee revenue at over $1.9 billion in 2022 on a fee schedule of 0.15% per credit and $0.005 per debit, while Apple Pay touched roughly $199 billion of in-store spend that year. Google Pay charges nothing comparable, so the wallets have opposite revenue shapes.

How does Apple Pay make money?

Apple Pay earns through the issuer-fee schedule described above, not through merchant surcharges. The 0.15% credit and $0.005 debit fees applied across more than 5,100 card-issuer agreements as of 2023 generate the issuer-fee line; Apple does not break it out in its filings. Cross-selling into Apple Card, Apple Cash, and Apple Pay Later is the second mechanism, though neither is broken out as Apple Pay revenue.

EU NFC Settlement and the Apple Pay Lockout

The single largest regulatory change for Apple Pay in recent memory sat in Europe, not the United States.

The Commission opened a formal Apple Pay investigation in June 2020 and accepted Apple’s binding commitments in July 2024, ending a four-year case.
Apple agreed to allow developers of rival mobile wallets to offer NFC tap-to-pay across the European Economic Area, with the commitments binding for 10 years from the implementation deadline of July 25, 2024.
Apple also agreed to provide access to key iOS features, including Face ID, Touch ID, double-click to launch the rival wallet, and the option to set a third-party wallet as the iOS default.
The Commission can fine Apple up to 10% of its total annual turnover, or 5% of its daily turnover per day of non-compliance, without having to find an antitrust infringement.

Why it matters: Per the European Commission, Apple’s NFC commitments are binding for 10 years across the European Economic Area; the $1.9 billion US issuer-fee model does not necessarily translate when iOS users in the EU can default to a non-Apple wallet for tap-to-pay.

The EU settlement is the first time iOS NFC has been forced open at scale, and it is binding for a decade. Watch banking consortia and individual European issuers for the first non-Apple wallets to take advantage of the new access, that is where the structural displacement (if any) will show up first.

Can you use Google Pay on an iPhone?

Not in the tap-to-pay sense. Apple iOS does not permit any third-party payment app to use the NFC chip for contactless payments in the United States, where Apple Pay is the only NFC tap-to-pay option on iPhone. The EU settlement carves out the European Economic Area only; in the US, the iOS NFC restriction described by the CFPB still applies, so a US iPhone user wanting Google Wallet’s tap-to-pay capability cannot get it on their iPhone.

Google Pay in India: The UPI Volume Story

Google Pay’s scale story sits in India, not the United States.
NPCI’s UPI ecosystem processed 21.63 billion transactions worth ₹27.97 lakh crore in December 2025 alone, the highest monthly total to date.
Google Pay held the second position with 7.5 billion transactions, 34.64% of UPI volume, and 34.25% of UPI value.

PhonePe led with 9.81 billion transactions worth ₹13.61 lakh crore, 45.35% of volume and 48.68% of value, with Paytm a distant third at 1.65 billion transactions.
PhonePe plus Google Pay together control roughly 80% of UPI volume, well above the 30% per-app cap that NPCI introduced to prevent concentration.

The takeaway: Google Pay’s mass-market scale runs through India’s UPI rails, not US in-store taps; 7.5 billion transactions in December 2025 alone is a single-month number that dwarfs the wallet’s entire US footprint.

The 30% NPCI cap is the structural 2025 event for Google Pay’s transaction count: if enforced as designed, both PhonePe and Google Pay must shed volume share over time, and the redistribution will favor smaller apps such as Navi, super.money, and CRED rather than producing a third major. Where this lands changes Google’s transaction-count story more than any US iOS tweak will.

Global Availability. Country Coverage

The two wallets are now near-parity on global country count.
Apple Pay operates across approximately 84 countries and territories worldwide, per Apple’s support documentation, while Google Wallet is available in 86 countries for both Android and Wear OS per Google’s support page.

Apple Pay’s Europe coverage spans 44 countries and territories from Albania through Vatican City. Apple Cash person-to-person transfers remain US-only, with a $2,000 rolling seven-day limit on Apple Cash Family accounts, a constraint Google Pay does not face on the Indian UPI rails.

What is the difference between Apple Pay and Google Pay?

Three differences matter for the statistics view. First, US NFC scope: Apple Pay is the only NFC tap-to-pay option on iOS in the United States, while Android permits any wallet to use the NFC chip. Second, revenue: Apple Pay’s issuer-fee line was estimated at over $1.9 billion in 2022 on a 0.15% credit and $0.005 debit schedule; Google Pay’s NFC fees on issuers are zero. Third, scale geography: Google Pay’s mass-market volume sits on India UPI rails, while Apple Pay’s volume concentrates in the US in-store taps and a steadily expanding European footprint.

Cashless Payments Context (Pew + Fed)

Mobile-wallet adoption rides on top of a broader cashless shift in US consumer behavior.

Pew’s American Trends Panel survey found roughly 41% of Americans say none of their typical weekly purchases are paid for using cash, up from 29% in 2018 and 24% in 2015.
Among households earning $100,000 or more, 59% make no typical-weekly purchases with cash, up from 43% in 2018.
The Federal Reserve’s 2025 Diary recorded cash at 14% of all US consumer payments, with credit cards at 35% and debit cards at 30% in 2024.
Consumers made an average of 48 payments per month in 2024, up two payments from 2023, continuing an upward trend that began in 2021.

Worth noting: Pew Research reported 41% of Americans use no cash in a typical week and the Federal Reserve put 2024 cash share at 14% of US payments by count; mobile wallets account for the gain in remote payments more than the in-store tap, where credit and debit cards still dominate.

The remote-payment share is the most reliable forward indicator for either wallet, where Apple Pay (Safari + in-app) and Google Pay (Chrome + in-app) extract growth without needing tap-to-pay at a physical reader.

Apple Pay vs Google Pay Revenue: How They Stack Up

The wallets do not earn money the same way, which is why “Apple Pay revenue” and “Google Pay revenue” are not apples-to-apples.
Apple charges card issuers 0.15% on credit and $0.005 on debit per CFPB filings; analysts cited by the CFPB estimated issuer-fee revenue at over $1.9 billion in 2022.
The fee applies across more than 5,100 card-issuer agreements as of 2023.

Apple Pay 2022 issuer-fee revenue estimate (CFPB)	Value
Estimated revenue	Over $1.9 billion

Source: CFPB Big Tech’s Role in Contactless Payments, September 2023

Google does not disclose a payments revenue line equivalent to Apple’s issuer-fee model; the consensus is that the wallet operates as an ads-and-services pull-through inside Alphabet’s Google Services segment rather than a standalone P&L. The most reliable Google Pay scale figure remains its UPI transaction count, 7.5 billion in December 2025.

US Proximity Mobile Payments Forecast

The US proximity-payments market sits on a trajectory that caps how big the Apple Pay vs Google Pay in-store fight can get.
EMARKETER projects that US proximity mobile payment users will reach 132.6 million by 2028 on a 4.4% average annual growth rate, and transaction value will pass the $1 trillion mark by 2027.
Transaction value is forecast to grow 17.2% annually from 2024 to 2028, and roughly half of US smartphone users will make a proximity mobile payment at least monthly by 2028, per the same EMARKETER forecast.

Forecast metric	2024-2028 trajectory
Users (peak 2028)	132.6 million
Transaction value growth (CAGR)	17.2%
Value milestone	Over $1 trillion by 2027
Half of US smartphone users using proximity payments	By 2028

Source: EMARKETER US Proximity Mobile Payments forecast, 2024-2028

Mobile-wallet in-store penetration already reached 31.2% of US consumers in September 2024, nearly triple the rate three years earlier, per PYMNTS Intelligence, indicating the EMARKETER forecast is anchored to a base that is still expanding fast.

Conclusion

The two wallets no longer compete on the same field. Apple Pay reaches 15.9% of US consumers, and roughly three in four US iPhone owners have activated it, an outcome the iOS NFC lockout helped enforce until the European Commission forced iOS open across the European Economic Area. The Commission’s binding commitments run for 10 years, with a July 25, 2024, implementation deadline. Apple Pay’s $199 billion of 2022 US in-store spend and the over $1.9 billion in 2022 issuer-fee revenue estimated by the CFPB sit on top of more than 5,100 card-issuer agreements.

Google Pay’s mass-market scale story sits in India, where the wallet handled 7.5 billion UPI transactions in December 2025 alone (34.64% volume share) per NPCI. NPCI’s 30% per-app volume cap and the continuing rise of cross-border transactions are the next two milestones to watch for the volume side of the comparison. US proximity-payments value sits on a path past $1 trillion by 2027, and mobile already accounts for 23% of US payments by count per the Federal Reserve; the geographic split between the two wallets is the structural story to track through this year and next.