A mobile wallet can hold several ways to pay. For most users, it holds just one. That leaves card issuers competing for a place in the wallet before the customer ever reaches a store’s payment terminal.
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The October 2026 PYMNTS Intelligence report, “Apple Pay @12: Mobile Wallets Gain Ground, but Most Shoppers Still Tap a Card,” examines how consumers use wallets and choose among saved payment methods.
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It draws on a survey of 2,458 U.S. consumers. Its findings on saved payment methods cover mobile and digital wallet users broadly, including users of peer-to-peer apps such as Venmo and Cash App, rather than Apple Pay users alone.
Among wallet users, 54% keep only one payment method in the wallet they use most. Another 5% have multiple methods saved but always use the default, the option presented first. Only about 4 in 10 switch between saved methods. For an issuer, that means a customer’s decision to add a card has consequences beyond a single purchase: Without another saved option, there is no competing card to select inside that wallet.
The pattern varies by age. Among baby boomers and seniors who use wallets, 65% have only one payment method saved, compared with 49% of Generation Z users, a difference of 16 percentage points.
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