If you’re looking for more evidence that Apple Pay is already a big success, look no further than a recent estimate put out by Mike Dudas, the cofounder of mobile payments rewards startup Button and a former executive at Google Wallet. Using data from both regulatory filings and from Whole Foods CIO Jason Buechel, Dudas estimates that Apple Pay has accounted for roughly 1% of all transactions at Whole Foods since its launch three weeks ago.
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While 1% may not sound like much, it’s actually a surprisingly strong number given that Apple Pay is less than a month old and that mobile payments have never really made any significant dent in the percentages of total sales at major retailers. The 1% figure translates to roughly 150,000 transactions total, or around $6 million worth of goods if we assume all these transactions average $40 each, which Dudas says happens to be the average basket size of a Whole Foods shopping trip.
According to a report by The Financial Times, Apple will make $0.15 for every $100 worth of goods that people buy with Apple Pay — that means that in just the past three or so weeks, Apple has made an estimated $9,000 from Apple Pay transactions from just one retailer alone. When you consider how many more retailers are supporting Apple Pay and the fact that Apple Pay activated more than 1 million credit cards after just one week of launching, you can see that this has the potential to be another major cash cow for the company.
