CHART OF THE DAY: Apple Has Nearly A Billion Payment Cards On File

Having payment card information is crucial for keeping customers within one's ecosystem, and the biggest tech companies have done a great job at convincing people that their services for sending/receiving payments and purchasing goods are trustworthy and worthwhile. But no company has more cards on file than Apple.

Based on estimates charted for us by BI Intelligence, Apple is nearing a billion iTunes accounts on file, and that number is likely to surge immensely. Customers in China can now link their UnionPay payment cards to their Apple IDs: For context, UnionPay is the largest card network in the world with more cards in circulation than Visa and MasterCard combined. (Not on this list: Uber, which has north of 12 million payment cards on file.)