On the pooled numbers, yes. Apple Pay payments arrive on or before the due date 72.7% of the time and Google Pay 70.3%, against 65.1% for card and 57.9% for bank transfer (Adfin platform data). Compare two methods inside one business's own book, though, and almost all of that gap disappears. Your rails are unlikely to be setting your on-time rate.
The short version
- Across the whole book: Apple Pay 72.7% paid on or before the due date, Google Pay 70.3%, card 65.1%, open banking 62.0%, bank transfer 57.9% (Adfin platform data, 59,777 paid customer-initiated payments over 26 months).
- Hold the business constant and the gaps fall below 1.5 percent. Of 71 businesses with real volume in both, 39 did better on Apple Pay and 32 did better on card (Adfin platform data).
- So the pooled ranking is mostly describing which businesses switch a method on and which of their customers reach for it.
- Once a payment is late the method stops separating anything, with a median delay of 8 days for card, both wallets and open banking alike, so your method affects whether you wait rather than how long.
- Adding a wallet is reasonable because some of your clients prefer one. This data can't promise you it changes when they pay.
What the pooled figures say
Adfin can see, per invoice, when a customer paid and how. Across 59,777 paid payment requests where the customer chose the method themselves, spanning 26 months and 1,042 businesses, the ranking runs Apple Pay 72.7%, Google Pay 70.3%, card 65.1%, open banking 62.0% and bank transfer 57.9% paid on or before the due date (Adfin platform data). About fifteen percent separates top from bottom, and the full table with confidence intervals is in the UK Getting Paid Report.
Two things about that population before you lean on it. Direct debit is excluded, because Bacs settles a few days after the due date by design, so a blended figure would report the settlement calendar as customer behaviour. And these are Adfin's own customers, weighted towards small practices billing small recurring fees, so half of those invoices are under £180. Your book will differ.
Compare two methods inside one business's own book
Businesses that offer Apple Pay aren't the same businesses as the ones taking bank transfers, and their customers aren't the same customers either. So the test to run isn't the ranking. It's what happens when you compare methods inside a single ledger, where the terms, the invoices and the client list are all held still.
Across 71 businesses with at least twenty card payments and twenty Apple Pay payments each, covering 24,883 payments, the pooled gap of about 6 percent in Apple Pay's favour shrinks to 0.81 percent for the typical business (Adfin platform data). And the direction is close to a coin toss: 39 of those businesses collected on time more often through Apple Pay, 32 more often through card.
The same test on open banking runs the other way and lands in the same place. Pooled, open banking looks about 1.5 percent worse than card; inside one book it comes out 1.44 percent better, on a 51 to 44 split across 96 businesses (Adfin platform data). Bank transfer looks about 7 percent worse than card pooled, and 0.52 percent worse inside one book, on a 13 to 13 split across 26.
Be careful about reading that as the methods being interchangeable, because it doesn't say that either. The within-business signs do lean Apple Pay's way fairly consistently. They're just far too small for you to plan around.
What the pooled gap is describing
Composition, mostly. A business with wallets switched on tends to be one that already sends a payment link with a checkout attached and bills modest recurring amounts. And a client who pays with a wallet is usually somebody holding a phone with your invoice open, deciding to deal with it now.
So the pooled table describes which businesses turn a method on and which of their customers pick one up. Separating that from the rails needs the within-business test, and once you run it your rails have little left to explain.
Does the method change how late a payment gets?
Barely. Among payments that arrive after the due date, the median delay is 8 days for card, Apple Pay, Google Pay and open banking, and 10 days for bank transfer (Adfin platform data, 59,777 paid customer-initiated payments). Whatever a method is doing, it acts on whether your client misses the date, and hardly at all on how long you then wait.
| Method | Typical timing against the due date | Median delay when it does arrive late |
|---|---|---|
| Apple Pay | 2 days early | 8 days |
| Google Pay | 1 day early | 8 days |
| Card | on the due date | 8 days |
| Open banking | on the due date | 8 days |
| Bank transfer | on the due date | 10 days |
Adfin platform data, customer-initiated payments over 26 months.
That left-hand column is about when your clients choose to act. It says nothing about how fast anything clears: a wallet payment lands early because it gets made on receipt, while your client paying by bank transfer is doing an errand later in the week.
What to do with this
What survives is smaller than the headline, and it's about the steps between your invoice and your client's money.
- Offer the methods your clients already use. Some of them will pay with a wallet given the option, and that's reason enough without any claim about your due date.
- Take the typing out. Bank details ask your client to open an app, add a payee, copy a sort code and an account number, add a reference and check it. A payment link asks them to approve something already filled in.
- Run the cut on your own book. Split your last year of paid invoices by the method each client used and compare on-time rates. A difference of a percent or two either way is ordinary variation at small volumes.
- For a client who is late every month, change the mechanism, because a wallet is unlikely to help. A direct debit mandate moves the decision to collect over to you, and moving clients onto direct debit covers that conversation.
So wallets belong on your checkout because your clients like them, and your on-time rate is mostly set elsewhere: by your terms, your due dates and which clients you have in the first place.
Common questions
Do customers pay faster with Apple Pay? Across Adfin's whole book, 72.7% of Apple Pay payments arrive on or before the due date against 65.1% for card. Compare the two inside a single business's own ledger and the typical gap is 0.81 percent, with 39 businesses out of 71 better on Apple Pay and 32 better on card, so most of the pooled difference describes which businesses and which customers use a wallet.
Will adding Apple Pay improve my on-time payment rate? This data can't promise that. The within-business comparison puts the difference under 1.5 percent, on a near-even split. Adding a wallet is worth doing because some of your clients prefer it, and your on-time rate is mostly set by your terms, your due dates and your client mix.
Which payment method gets paid on time most often? On Adfin's figures your order is Apple Pay at 72.7%, Google Pay at 70.3%, card at 65.1%, open banking at 62.0% and bank transfer at 57.9%, on 59,777 paid customer-initiated payments over 26 months. The ranking mostly reflects which businesses offer each method.
Why is bank transfer paid on time least often? It asks the most of your client. Setting up a new payee and typing a sort code, an account number and a reference is a task people put off. Pooled, bank transfer runs about 7 percent behind card, though inside one book that gap is around half a percent.
Does a wallet payment clear faster than a card payment? No, and the data doesn't say otherwise. Apple Pay payments show as arriving two days before your due date on average because people tend to pay on receipt. Settlement isn't quicker: cards and wallets clear the same way.
Once an invoice is late, does the payment method matter? Hardly at all. The median delay among late payments is 8 days for card, Apple Pay, Google Pay and open banking, and 10 days for bank transfer. In this book almost everything predicts whether your due date gets missed and almost nothing predicts how long you wait.
This article describes payment behaviour measured on Adfin's own platform and is not legal or financial advice. The figures cover customer-initiated payments only, since direct debit settles after the due date through the Bacs cycle by design and cannot be blended with them. Last updated August 2026.
