Apple Pay’s Expansion Plans Not Slowing

Given that Apple Pay is approaching its third birthday—October 2017 is the magic month—it would be easy to think that Apple Pay is pretty much accepted everywhere it could be. That’s not the case, though, as new reports note that not only is Apple Pay still expanding its reach, but it’s doing so fairly fervently.

So far, the reports note, over 20 different financial institutions—banks and credit unions and the like—offer support for Apple Pay. With iOS 11 set to arrive this fall, Apple could be making a push to take over more of the larger market and get its payment system into more users’ hands. Some are looking to iOS 11 and the new peer-to-peer (P2P) payment feature it will bring to Apple Pay to really give the wallet’s popularity a jolt.

Apple Pay has added an average of two new countries of support every quarter since the third quarter of 2015, and now can be found in countries ranging from the UK to Canada to, more recently, Brazil. Given that the mobile P2P market is expected to reach $336 billion in 2021—and that’s up from $19 billion in 2015—it’s clear to see why Apple wants as many aces in its hand as it can get.

Thus, its rapid expansion makes sense. Apple has one serious problem to overcome with Apple Pay, and that’s the fact that it can never have all of any one market unless it converts said market to Apple first. Apple products are often seen as being “for the wealthy”, a point that’s supported by the price tags in many countries. In 2015, Forbes noted the average Apple price was $687, and Android was $254. By 2016, that gap had widened from a Fortune report.

Since Apple can only ever have part of a market, and a fairly limited part at that, it needs to expand geographically if it hopes to expand at all. With so much at stake here, it’s obvious Apple will want as much as possible. So if Apple Pay isn’t already in a country near you, wait a while; it likely won’t be long.