Apple Pay processes $6T annually, edges out Mastercard

The last paragraph of the article admits that this is almost certainly just made-up “research”. There are no facts here.

Ugh. Yeah, that's critically important and the article should have both led with it and treated the "facts" appropriately. eg called bullshit on them up front. ;)

Doesn't apple pay rely on MasterCard and Visa though?

That was my immediate thought as well - Apple Pay is authenticating the credit card, but isn't (afaik) actually involved in any transfers,

"Now, according to comparison site TradingPlatforms, Apple Pay is the second most popular digital payment system, beaten only by Visa"

TradingPlatforms on their article says: "TradingPlatforms.com reports that Apple Pay has surpassed Mastercard as the payment system handling the most annual transactions at over $6 trillion."

This article seems a convoluted way to gain some backlinks to their website. Where is the data coming from?