Apple announced in June at their World Wide Developers Conference that they're planning to roll out Apple Pay for Web in time for the holiday season. Mac users will be able to pay online in Safari using a “Pay with Apple Pay” button, and authenticate their purchase using Touch ID on their phone or watch. Previously, Apple Pay could only be used via some iOS apps or in a few selected retails stores. The brand new iOS 10 adds the option to use Apple Pay within Safari. So, when you check out online with Apple Pay, you'll touch your finger on the home button to complete the transaction.

In addition, Apple announced that Apple Pay would be immediately available at more than 70 retailers, including sites like Target, Sephora, Nike, Hotels.com and even Kickstarter.

The competitive landscape:

The world of online payments is constantly evolving with multiple payment platforms & technologies available for online retailers. However, the undisputed leader for online payments is PayPal - and Apple seems to have its sight onto a lucrative market which is currently dominated by a single player.

Google and Amazon also wanted to get a share of the action with their Google Checkout and Amazon Payments technologies but it doesn't seem that either of them has had the ability to significantly dent PayPal's hegemony.

Looking at SimilarTech insights about usage of Google Checkout, Amazon Payments and PayPal in the US, over 90 thousand domains are currently using PayPal while under 3 thousand domains use Amazon Paymet or Google Checkout as their chosen payment alternative.

Usage by US domain:

1. PayPal: 90,270 domains
2. Google Checkout: 2,668 domains
3. Amazon Payments: 2,490 domains

While Apple wants to win online, PayPal ready to go offline:

PayPal also seems to want a part of the retail action. They announced recent partnerships with Visa and Mastercard, which will increase Mastercard and Visa usage while increasing PayPal's presence in physical stores. It's a huge step for PayPal's ambition to become an universally accepted method of payment.

What are the chances of Apple Pay for Web taking off?

Upon release of iOS 10, Apple said that over 200,000 websites from small and large retailers were planning to support Apple Pay on their sites. Many of the sites include online retailers using e-commerce platforms run by Shopify, Demandware and IBM.

At SimilarTech we've just included Apple Pay as one of the payment technologies we monitor and in the upcoming weeks we look forward to seeing if Apple Pay takes off across the web. Note that we've just added the technology so it will take us a couple of weeks to track and measure its adoption & growth...

Watch this space.