Cook touts 'amazing' Apple Pay growth

Overshadowed by better-than-expected iPhone sales projected for the current quarter and the performance of the App Store is the growing popularity of Apple Pay.

Citing "leading financial partners," Apple CEO Tim Cook says 3 out of 4 contactless payments made in stores in the U.S. were done using Apple Pay, the company's mobile payments service.

A contactless payment requires the user to pay for an item by holding their smartphone or smartwatch near a payment terminal. Using near-field communication (NFC), the action will transmit and process the payment.

Apple says the number of monthly active users on Apple Pay has surged 450%.

"This is amazing," said Cook during a quarterly earnings call on Tuesday.

The service is available at 3 million locations in the U.S., and 11 million globally.

Cook says Apple will enable Apple Pay on Safari browsers, allowing consumers to make online purchases through the payments service, which recently launched in France, Switzerland and Hong Kong. "Adoption outside the U.S. has been explosive, with over half of transaction volume now coming from non-U.S. markets," said Cook.

The use of mobile payment services like Apple Pay is expected to grow quickly over the next couple years. Research firm eMarketer says "mobile proximity" payments will hit $27 billion this year, and balloon to $210 billion by 2019.

Follow Brett Molina on Twitter: @brettmolina23.