Samsung Pay is growing faster than Apple Pay

Although Apple Pay currently has more monthly users than Samsung Pay and Android Pay combined, an analyst cited in a recent report by Bloomberg claims that Samsung Pay is growing faster than Apple Pay. But it’s not just Samsung Pay that’s growing quickly. Both Samsung Pay and Android Pay have the same number of monthly active users – five million each – and both came out at the same time.

The reason Apple Pay has the bigger subscriber base is because Apple Pay has a year-long head start on its Android and Samsung equivalents, launching in October 2014. Both Samsung Pay and Android Pay arrived in September 2015.

But Apple Pay still only has 12 million monthly active users compared to the five million subscribers each for Samsung Pay and Android Pay. We can’t say if Android Pay’s current growth curve is faster than Apple Pay’s as we haven’t seen recent adoption rate figures, but it seems likely.

Samsung Pay’s rapid growth is perhaps not too surprising, considering it works with both newer NFC payment terminals as well as the older magnetic stripe terminals (called MST). Both Apple Pay and Android Pay only work on NFC-equipped payment terminals. Having said that, the fact that Android Pay has the same number of users as Samsung Pay is an noteworthy achievement.