Category: Featured News

Apple Pay has finally come to Canada, officially launched this week

Apple Pay has officially launched in Canada, where it may be able to find more traction among consumers than it has in the United States. Apple launched its mobile payments platform in the U.S. late last year, but Apple Pay has not found the degree of success that Apple had expected. Of the 1 million people that are registered for Apple Pay, approximately only 5% use the service regularly. In Canada, Apple may be able to find more consumers that are interested in mobile payments.

Consumers in Canada have shown a great deal of interest in mobile payments

Canadian consumers now have access to Apple Pay, which will allow them to use their mobile devices to make purchases at physical stores and online. Physical payments are accomplished by “tapping” the mobile device to a payment terminal, which is equipped with NFC technology. NFC is designed to transmit data over short distances, which makes it an ideal tool for mobile payments. Only those with the latest iPhones will be able to use Apple Pay, however, due to the fact that these are the only iPhones that are equipped with NFC technology.

Apple is slowly breaking into new markets with its mobile payments service

Apple has opted to take a relatively slow approach to the expansion of its mobile payments service. The company has shown interest in bringing the service to other countries, but it has opted to take its time in doing so. The slow approach may pay off in the long run, as consumers will become more comfortable with mobile payments when apple Pay becomes more available.

Consumers in the US are lagging when it comes to mobile payments adoption

While consumers are becoming more interested in mobile payments, they still prefer more traditional forms of commerce, such as paying with plastic cards and using physical currency. In the United States, mobile payments is growing, but at a slower pace than what is being seen in other countries. As such, many organizations are beginning to focus on these markets with their mobile payments services.

The results of the Wanderful Media annual survey showed that smartphone applications will be vital this season.

The 2015 Annual Holiday Shopping Survey results have now been released by Wanderful Media, the firm that produced the popular cash-back Find&Save shopping mobile apps for Android and iOS based smartphone users.

The insights provided by this study could be invaluable to merchants as they fine tune their holiday strategies.

Among the most important trends that were identified within this survey was that mobile apps would be playing a critical role in holiday shopping not only in general, but especially among shoppers in the millennial generation. In fact, among shoppers in that demographic, 92 percent said that they would be using their smartphones while shopping during the holiday season. Among the respondents as a whole, 73 percent of all holiday shoppers said they would be using those mobile devices as a part of their shopping journey.

Shoppers in all age categories plan to use mobile apps to shop this season, with specific purposes in mind.

The main reasons that shoppers in all age categories are looking to their smartphones in order to help them to get through their gift buying this holiday season include: discovering opportunities to save through digital coupons and promo codes for nearby stores; to find those store locations; and to compare the prices for the same product from one store to the next.

The survey also determined that smartphone apps that were the most popular tool for mobile commerce, especially because 78 percent of millennials said they would use applications for shopping purposes over the holiday season. Comparatively, 67 percent of overall shoppers in every age category said they would be using those tools for the same purpose. Over 80 percent of holiday shoppers who are millennials also said they would be interested in receiving push notifications from apps with regards to holiday sales that would be occurring from Black Friday through Christmas.

Aside from notifications from mobile apps, millennials also said they would be willing to sign up for other types of mobile alerts in order to stay on top of the latest deals as they become available. Among all age groups, 65 percent said they would be willing to sign up for that type of savings notification.