Excluding a one-time payment, Apple's services revenue rose 27 percent during the September quarter to $9.981 billion, aided by the company's usual suspects but in no small part by a sharp rise in Apple Pay transactions.

The company tripled its Apple Pay transaction volumes year-over-year, CEO Tim Cook said during a results call. This is presumably owing not just to regional expansions but better support in the U.S., where chains like Costco and CVS recently completed rollouts.

Some 60 percent of all U.S. retail shops support Apple Pay, according to Cook, the ratio rising to 71 percent among the top 100 chains. That does exclude two of the biggest chains, Target and Walmart, both of which have actively avoided Apple Pay or indeed any other third-party mobile platform.

Several other services such as Apple Music and the App Store achieved quarterly records, and Cook noted that there are now roughly 330 million paid subscriptions across its ecosystems. The CEO didn't immediately break down this data.