Apple Pay’s user numbers will almost double during 2017 to 86 million customers around the world, Juniper Research predicted.

In its latest market report, the analyst company said it expected Apple to continue to lead the OEM mobile payment market, ahead of Samsung Pay and Google’s Android Pay.

However, all three services are expected to experience growth, with Samsung’s base set to increase from 18 million users in 2016 to 34 million this year, and Android Pay moving from 12 million users in 2016 to 24 million by the end of 2017.

The analyst house predicted the combined user bases of the three would make up over half of the world’s mobile contactless payment users by 2021 – increasing their 41 per cent share at the end of 2016 to 56 per cent by the end of the forecast period.

In 2021, Juniper said the services would have a combined customer number of 500 million.

Strong competition
Juniper’s forecasts come as all three companies continue to expand services into new markets, but also as competition from other sectors heats up.

Apple, Samsung and Google each increased the reach of their services during Q1 2017. During the period, India became Samsung’s 12th market, Apple added Ireland and is thought to be lining up Italy as its 15th market, and Android Pay rolled out in Belgium, its 10th deployment.

To gain a base of over half of the world’s mobile contactless payment users, as Juniper forecasts, Apple, Google and Samsung will have to overcome significant opposition from a range of companies. Rivals include banks, e-commerce giants, retailers, operators and official government schemes in some areas.

This is in addition to China’s dominant providers – Alipay and WeChat Pay with their huge customer numbers.

According to Chinese government statistics, almost 68 per cent of China’s mobile phone users made a payment with their handset in 2016. This equates to 469 million people – although its figure also takes into account non-point of sale payments, including remittance and person-to-person services.