Apple Pay or Google Pay? Finding Out Which FinTech Service Rules Europe

Google vs Apple: Two tech giants have taken similar steps to expand their offerings into fintech services, launching Google Pay and Apple Pay as online payment systems. They are comparable in nature, as both offer consumers contactless transactions that are tied to their preferred banking profile.

Europe is the continent known for its eCommerce maturity, so it pays, literally, to find out which payment providers online stores tend to offer: Apple Pay or Google Pay?

Apple Pay More Prevalent, Google Pay More Offered in Central and Southern Europe

The answer is unambiguously Apple Pay. The two tech giants may be head-to-head in terms of device and operating system popularity, but more online stores on the continent offer Apple’s payment method.

That is, with the exception of select countries in Central and Southern Europe. Namely, Poland, Bulgaria, Croatia, Ukraine and Greece are the five outliers where more online stores offer Google Pay than Apple Pay. Even fewer, Lithuania and Estonia, have an even split between the two.

How is that possible? Well, both Lithuania and Estonia are relatively small eCommerce markets, where online payments are not as prevalent as in markets in which eCommerce and online payments are larger industries. As a result, the few stores that offer Apple Pay tend to offer Google Pay as well, which is different from markets where a greater variety of stores leads to a higher likelihood of differentiation.

Varying Market Preferences Lead to Different Adoption

Apple Pay’s higher penetration among European online stores reflects its higher number of users. It is also the more widely offered and used payment method globally in direct comparison to Google Pay. However, the gap size between the two varies from market to market.

In Germany, for example, the difference between online store acceptance of Apple Pay (6.3%) and Google Pay (3.0%) is just over 3 percentage points. In Belgium, on the other hand, the difference is more defined, with more than 7 percentage points between Apple Pay (10.8%) and Google Pay (3.1%).

The reason for this divergence is based on cultural tendencies and different preferences. If there is a high demand for one of the two payment providers, some online stores may only offer one, while most offer both. This results in a greater or lesser difference depending on the total number of online stores in a market. It is also suspected that consumer demographics play a role in the favorable numbers of Apple Pay usage. Given that the Apple products tend to reach a younger, more affluent and urban consumer base, the readiness to use eWallets is higher than for others, who may have the service available but never use it.