Research from Stripe shows Brits love Apple Pay; hate tipping

Research from hugely popular payment platform Stripe has shone a light on the payment preferences of British consumers, especially compared to their American cousins.

It doesn’t paint a positive light on UK punters, who are reportedly too lazy to key in their payment information, and are loath to tip their Uber and Deliveroo drivers.

Firstly, Brits are consummate fans of online shopping and food delivery. Two-thirds of Brits have used e-commerce sites like ASOS and Amazon in the past year alone.

Brits are also more enthusiastic about food delivery services like Deliveroo and UberEATS. According to Stripe’s research, one-in-five have ordered food from these services, compared to the US, where that number plummets to one-in-ten.

Stripe asked Brits about their preferred payment methods, with 27 percent saying they preferred Apple Pay as their checkout option when buying something online. Compare this to the US, where only 14 percent said they used Apple Pay.

Apple Pay lets individuals buy things online without having to key in their credit card details each time. It’s easily the most convenient way to buy things online, and it’s available almost everywhere, from corner stores to Deliveroo.

It’s therefore no surprise that 47 percent of UK respondents said they’d ditch their baskets if it took too long to enter their payment information on a website.

Stripe also took a look at tipping, which lies at the heart of how providers get paid on several ecommerce platforms, from Uber and UberEATS, to Deliveroo and Foodora.

While over 53 percent of Americans think it’s important to be able to tip a seller on a marketplace, only 36 percent of Brits feel the same way. That’s hardly surprising though, when you consider the rigid tipping culture that exists in the US, but isn’t really present in Europe.

The research was performed on behalf of Stripe by Neilsen, who looked at over 1,000 US consumers, and over 500 adults across several European countries, as well as Japan, Singapore, and Australia. Where applicable, it substituted brands for local equivalents, like Deliveroo and ASOS.

It’s not the biggest study ever of consumer behaviors, and part of me wishes Stripe took a longitudinal approach in order to see how trends have changed over the past few years.

Tipping on Uber, for example, has only been a feature for a year or so, and Apple Pay only launched in Britain in 2015. As consumers are more aware of these things, it’ll be interesting to see how that translates into overall adoption growth.