This is the conclusion from data provided by Raiffeisen Polbank, the only company in Poland to share statistics regarding Apple Pay payments so far.
Data provided to us by the Raiffeisen Polbank press office shows that between June 19, the day of Apple Pay's rollout in Poland, and the end of the month, 5863 of the bank's customers used the app. Raiffeisen Polbank is the second company in Poland to disclose the exact number of Apple Pay users. Earlier on Pekao said that during the first week of Apple's wallet launch the app was connected to 21 thousand payment cards issued by the bank.
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I talked to some bankers off the record and found out that Apple Pay users are characterized by a high transaction volume, which means they use their smarpthones to pay very often. This is confirmed by the hard data I received from Raiffeisen Polbank regarding the number of Apple Pay transactions. So far they are the only company in Poland that decided to share this information.
In June, that is in the first 12 days of Apple Pay's availability, Raiffeisen Polbank customers made 21.2 thousand transactions using the app. If we tried to extrapolate this data for a whole month, multiplying the last ten days of June by three and dividing it by the number of Apple Pay users, it would turn out that each of them used their iPhone to make payments 10 times a month. If we compare it to HCE users at Raiffeisen Polbank, a total of 6.9 thousand customers made 51.6 thousand payments in the second quarter of this year. That gives us an average of 2.5 payments a month per user.
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Google Pay users make more payments than HCE using customers. Raiffeisen Polbank says that the solution has been activated by 1873 of their customers who made a total of 11.9 thousand transactions in June. That gives us an average of 6 payments a month per user. The data shows us that people who use Apple and Google's payment apps use mobile payments a lot more frequently than customers who use this functionality in the bank's app. If the situation is similar in other banks in Poland, it would explain why companies ditch HCE in favor of, for instance, Google Pay. The last bank to take that step was Getin, and Raiffeisen Polbank announced it will do so too.
