Tag: cyber monday mobile transactions

eBay reports strong activity over holiday shopping weekend

Retail giant eBay has reported impressive growth over the recent holiday shopping weekend, extending from Thanksgiving Day to Cyber Monday. The retailer has been quite cavalier with its approach to the holiday season in the past, making aggressive efforts to engage consumers and provide them with reasons to shop online rather than visit physical stores. This year has proven no different, but eBay has been putting a bolder emphasis on mobile commerce in the hopes of engaging the growing number of consumers with mobile devices.

Consumers show their proclivity for mobile shopping

According to eBay, mobile commerce volume, in terms of transactions, grew by 96% over the holiday shopping weekend. PayPal processed the vast majority of the mobile transactions being made during this period, reporting a 115% increase in mobile spending. PayPal notes that Cyber Monday represented the most active day, in terms of mobile payments, it had ever experienced in its history.

eBay predicts $20 billion in mobile payments for 2013

The holiday season is not over, of course, and shopping is expected to continue being a high priority for many consumers through the end of December. eBay anticipates that it will handle some $20 billion in mobile payments this year, with the majority of these payments coming from the holiday season. The retailer has been working to encourage consumers to make mobile payments throughout 2013 and has managed to find some success in this endeavor with the help of PayPal.

NFC alternatives provide consumers with more options

PayPal has become quite powerful in the mobile commerce sector, as it has offered a payment solution that is not based on NFC technology. Payment platforms that make use of NFC technology can typically only be accessed by NFC-enabled devices, which are not abundantly available to consumers currently. PayPal, and other companies interested in mobile commerce, have been working to provide consumers with an alternative to NFC in order to make it easier for them to make mobile payments.

The digital transaction giant has said that there are far more people purchasing gifts with their devices.

According to a recent PayPal mobile payments release, there are far more consumers using their devices for buying holiday gifts, this year than there have been in previous years, to the point that they have said that there has been a full doubling, or more.

This company’s data is significant as it handles one in five ecommerce transactions worldwide.

On Cyber Monday, alone, the data from PayPal mobile payments showed that there was an increase in global transaction volume from smartphones and tablets equaling 108.9 percent when compared to the same day in 2012. They compared the same first Monday after Thanksgiving as opposed to comparing the calendar dates, themselves, which would not have represented the same shopping experience.

This allowed the PayPal mobile payments data to provide an accurate representation of year over year growth.

The company, which is owned by eBay, currently boasts 137 active accounts around the world. It is currently present in 193 global markets that use 26 different currencies. Every day, the company processes an estimated 8 million payment transactions. Many consumers have already been using this digital wallet service for making their purchases online through the use of their laptops and desktop computers. The transfer to smartphones and tablets has been a natural one for quite a few of them, giving PayPal the opportunity to observe some considerable trends over the last few years.

According to a PayPal consumer experience advocate, Stacy General, in a statement that was recently released, “The technology consumers have in their hands can help retailers drive sales and engage consumers.”

At this time in which many of the large wallets such as Google Wallet and Isis are still struggling to get a foothold in the market, other options such as PayPal mobile payments are experiencing a much more promising rate of growth. Many in the industry are taking this as an indication that this transaction technology does still have hope, even if its adoption by consumers will be slightly slower than had initially been predicted.