Tag: mpayments

The 2016 Digital Payments Study showed a rapidly rising number of consumers using smartphones to pay.

The 2016 Digital Payments Study from Visa revealed insight into European mobile payments trends. It showed that there has been a spike in the number of people using smartphones as wallets. In fact, the number of people using this type of transaction has tripled since 2015.

At the time of the research, 54 percent of consumers were using mobile payments on a regular basis.

The research indicated that European mobile payments were regularly used by over half of consumers. Comparatively, at the same time the year before, only 18 percent of consumers were using mobile wallets to pay for goods and services.

This research involved the participation of over 36,000 online consumers in Europe. They resided in any of 19 different countries in the continent. The study showed a dramatic shift in the use of mobile payments technology over the prior 12 months.

The European mobile payments research also indicated that more people are open to trying the tech.

Last year at the same time, 38 percent of respondents had never used mobile payments and had no intention of ever trying it. This year’s figure has dropped to 12 percent. Clearly, far more people are interested in trying the use of mobile devices to pay for products and services.

There were two countries in which it was most obvious that there was a very large increase in mobile wallet use and interest. These two countries were Turkey and Romania. They have been adopting this technology at a staggering rate.

That said, the United Kingdom stood out as a market where there was a very large percentage of smartphone users who also used mobile payments. In the U.K., 74 percent of device owners had tried mobile wallets. Over half of the people who had tried the tech (59%) had done so to transfer money to friends and family. Slightly fewer (45 percent) had used it for purchasing take-out at restaurants.

A new trend in European mobile payments has also started to develop. Within it, consumers have revealed that they are increasingly comfortable in using their mobile devices to make more expensive purchases.

The CNVA has announced that it is preparing to roll out mpayments across the country.

A new announcement from the Canadian National Vending Alliance (CNVA) included the roll-out of vending machine mobile payments nationwide. The CNVA intends to launch machines compatible with smartphone transactions throughout Canada.

In order to complete that roll-out, the CNVA has been working with PayRange and its BluKey dongle.

The new partnership with PayRange has made it possible for the BluKey dongle to be installed in existing machines. In this way, contactless vending machine mobile payments can be accepted via the PayRange app. That mobile application accepts all major credit cards. It is available to both iOS and Android device users.

Steve Tremblay, the president of CNVA, stated: “with more people becoming increasingly cashless, we realized we needed a mobile payment solution to bring to all our machines.”

This addition of vending machine mobile payments has been deemed a prudent step ahead.

After all, USA Technologies vending machine solutions provider in the United States recently released interesting research findings. They indicated that revenue increases were possible through self-service POS terminals for which Apple Pay functionality has been properly advertised. This indicates that there is a growing interest in mobile payments among consumers.

While there have been many barriers in the way of adopting mobile payments, consumers are starting to show interest. Those invested in this market hope consumers will see the convenience of mobile wallets in these self-service areas. This could lay the foundation for broader use after consumers become more accustomed to using their smartphones to pay.

Still, it is important to recognize that Apple Pay remains the best known mobile wallet in the world. Compared to its rivals, it has managed a certain degree of popularity. The launch of the vending machine mobile payments occurs at a time when far fewer consumers have downloaded – or even heard of – the PayRange app. It will be interesting to see what percentage of consumers will be drawn in by the mpayments option when they decide to make their next purchase from a vending machine. Particularly as exact change is increasingly inconvenient.