The research revealed that 29 percent would rather pay with their smartphones than credit or cash.
A recent mobile commerce study has revealed that nearly one third of Americans have stated that if they could carry only a single item when they leave the house, it would be their smartphones, even over and above their wallets.
This preference has occurred at the same time that a growing interest has revealed itself in smartphone payments.
These discoveries were among the results of a mobile commerce analysis that was conducted by PayPal. It also indicated that most consumers in the United States – 86 percent – wish that they wouldn’t need to carry a wallet at all. The report on the study also looked into the consumer attitudes in four other countries, which were: Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Germany. They saw a similar trend toward smartphone payments in each of those countries.
At the same time, the report indicated that businesses are falling behind consumer interest in mobile commerce.
What it showed was that businesses are not keeping up with what consumers want from mobile commerce and payments. It has indicated that 68 percent of Americans have found themselves in a situation in which they would want to buy something but they didn’t have any cash on them. Another 30 percent stated that this happens to them frequently. However, PayPal did not include any data about the attitudes regarding business owners for accepting smartphone payments within the report.
Another mobile commerce study performed by Gartner, showed that transactions will likely grow to reach $235.4 billion before the end of the year. Moreover, by 2017, they predict that transactions will hit $721 billion. At the same time, NFC technology – which has been used for many forms of mobile payments services – has not taken off as had previously been predicted, and many high profile services (such as ISIS and Google Wallet) have struggled to take off.
The PayPal mobile commerce survey indicated that shoppers are ready and looking for a change in the methods available to them for making payments, but there is yet to be a market winner because no single system has emerged.
Recent research is showing that if this technology is going to take off, customers need a reason to use it.
Although there is definite growth occurring in the world of mobile payments, there is still a massive amount of potential that is being left unused and a recent study is suggesting that part of the solution to this issue is in offering incentives to consumers.
Regardless of whether wallets, NFC technology, QR codes or other methods are used, consumers need a reason.
The struggle is primarily based on the fact that consumers are currently quite happy with the method and convenience of their cash, credit and debit cards. Therefore, there is not a significant amount of motivation for them to learn how to use mobile payments through their smartphones when they already feel that they have everything that they need.
At the moment, mobile payments have yet to answer the consumer’s question “what’s in it for me?”
The research in a survey of 4,000 people in the United States and Canada has indicated that consumers aren’t necessarily waiting for mobile payments to become more broadly available. Instead, they want to know why using the technology would be of any value to them in the first place. They are concerned about issues such as security, privacy, and convenience – areas where they already feel relatively comfortable when completing transactions at the register.
The survey was conducted by Accenture in order to gain a better understanding of what would motivate Canadian and American consumers to start to use mobile payments as a larger part of their daily lives. What they determined was that making the infrastructure available wasn’t nearly enough. Consumers need to be shown how they can benefit by using their smartphones instead of cash, credit, and debit.
These mobile commerce incentives can be as straightforward ad discounts, rewards, or other value added strategies. The survey has indicated that these incentives will be enough motivation to turn many consumers toward using their smartphones instead of their traditional transaction methods.
Mobile payments services and retailers that understand this fact may be able to implement campaigns and strategies that will appeal to the consumer’s preferences and provide them with benefits that will encourage them to try the technology for the first time, and then become comfortable with using it more regularly, said the study.
