July 21, 2015

Merchants are interested in adding Apple Pay to their offerings at the point of sale. But according to Goldman Sachs, that interest is largely based on an elusive factor: “coolness.”

Novelty and “cool factor” were driving about 43% of merchant interest in Apple Pay, the March 2015 survey of US merchant acquirers and ISOs found. By comparison, one in five said merchants’ customers were actually asking for Apple Pay. In even fewer cases were merchants pressured to keep up with the competition.

Still, most respondents said relatively few merchants were interested in offering Apple Pay—over half indicated that under 10% of merchants were interested, while 28.6% put that figure between 10% and 20%.

Goldman also asked merchant acquirers and ISOs about their own plans to enable acceptance of Bitcoin; a majority said they had no such plans.

Research shows that consumers who use Apple Pay tend to like it—but mobile payments are still a decidedly niche activity.