Amid Declining Marketshare, Apple Aggressively Promotes Payments Platform in China

About a year and a half after Apple Pay made its debut in the country, Apple is entering into an aggressive promotional campaign for its mPayment service in China.

Between July 18th and 24th, users can get up to 50 percent off some purchases, with major retailers like Starbucks, 7-Eleven, Carrefour, and Burger King onboard for the promotion. Meanwhile, a number of domestic banks are offering their support, with some purchases raking-in up to 50 times the number of credit card points they would normally produce.

It’s not clear what specifically triggered Apple to create the promotion, but China’s is a market with unique challenges for the mPayments leader. Domestic services like Alipay and WeChat Pay were already dominating the mPayments market when Apple made its debut early last year, and while Apple Pay performed better than many analysts expected, it still faces entrenched and formidable competition. Meanwhile, Apple is losing its grip on the mobile market in the country: As MacRumors reports, between Q1 of last year and Q1 of 2017, Apple’s share of the smartphone market in China has dropped from 12.7 percent to 9.2 percent.

With a lower proportion of consumers using the devices needed to operate Apple Pay, the company needs to push its service aggressively to stay competitive.

Sources: MacRumors, Patently Apple, 9to5Mac