Apple Pay and Bitcoin have been named in the sentence quite a few times over the past year. Depending on how one wants to look at things, both payment options are either direct competitors of each other or future partners. Certain people might argue only Bitcoin community members see the connection with Apple Pay, but as it turns out, people search for Bitcoin more often compared to Apple Pay. Although, Paypal remains the clear leader as according to Google Trends.
Also read: iDeal Takes A Page Out of Bitcoin’s Book By Experimenting With Payment QR Codes
Bitcoin Beats Apple Pay on Google Trends
Comparing the Google Trends results for both Bitcoin and Apple Pay might be a bit mature though. Bitcoin has been around for over six years, even though the digital currency is still not widely used by consumers or businesses. Apple Pay, on the other hand, has only launched little over a year ago.
That being said, both payment options bring their own challenges and advantages to the table. Apple Pay is integrated in iOS, and is available owners of an iPhone 6 or 6S throughout the US and several other countries. However, consumers have to find merchants where NFC-enabled payments are accepted, which could be a struggle.
Additionally, Apple Pay relies on traditional financial tools, such as credit cards and bank accounts to make payments. It goes without saying banks and other financial institutions are not keen on new digital payment solutions and reaching agreements is a difficult and painstaking process even for a company like Apple.
Bitcoin, on the other hand, is not suffering from that particular drawback, as the digital currency operate outside of the realm of banks and authorities. But at the same time, this is also a factor which instills doubt into the minds of businesses and consumers, as there would be no one to “bail them out” if things went awry.
Furthermore, Bitcoin adoption is going quite well on the merchant side, although most of the focus lies in online payments. As far as in-store acceptance is concerned, very few stores accept Bitcoin payments right now, even though there is no additional cost involved to enable these payments. All a merchant needs is an internet connection and either a computer or mobile device to generate Bitcoin invoices.
Consumers are a different matter for both Apple Pay, and Bitcoin though. Apple Pay is often forgotten about as an available payment method, although it remains unclear as to why this would be the case. Bitcoin payments are not available everywhere, and users will have to rely on specific debit cards to spend virtual currency in a convenient manner.
Some Other Notable Trends on Google
It should come as no surprise that most of the Bitcoin searches on Google are coming from emerging markets where financial services are hard to come by. In the top five locations for Bitcoin searches are the Bahamas, Slovenia, and Ghana, to name a few. None of these countries is well-known the its financial structure or stability.
These three countries could pose problems for Apple Pay adoption as there are very little financial services to speak of, with the exception of Slovenia perhaps. However, it is in Ghana and the Bahamas that Apple Pay adoption would be a real struggle. It might be a good idea for Apple to consider Bitcoin integration at some point, considering the digital currency works on a global scale.
Source: Google Trends
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