Tag: m-payments

Industry experts in the retail sphere are predicting that the technology will start heating up next year.

With the close of 2015, there have been a number of predictions as to what will be taking off in 2016 and which trends will continue on their way, and many experts have been saying that they see mobile payments as something that will make an important splash before another year comes to a close.

The prediction is that mobile wallets will take off not only in retail stores but also other locations like restaurants.

Although there have been experts who have been predicting that mobile payments would be taking off for several years, the forecasts for 2016 are larger than ever before. With the introduction of chip credit cards, many people are saying that Samsung Pay, Android Pay and Apple Pay are going to be seen as more convenient and will start to become a normal form of transaction at retail counters and in restaurants. This will be an important shift as consumers have been quite resistant to stepping away from their plastic cards. According to CEB analyst, Andy Schmidt, 2016 could be the year in which that begins to change in a meaningful way.

The migration to chip cards could be just the opportunity that mobile payments need to make themselves known.

Banks, credit card issuers and retailers have all been changing their plastic card technology to include chips and many technology experts believe this slowdown at the checkout counter will have consumers looking to other types of transaction to speed up the process. While chip cards are considered to be safer than the magnetic stripes, it takes several seconds longer for each transaction to be completed. With the combination of the change in habits and the slower process, it could be what consumers need to look to the various smartphone-based options to speed things up again.

For this reason, it is expected that many companies are all going to do their part to stand out in the mobile wallet marketplace. There are already a large number of options, including major players such as Samsung, Apple, Google and even a recent entry by Walmart. Target has also announced that it’s working on its own option, while keeping its position as an important member of the anticipated MCX mobile payments app, as well. The belief seems to be that retailers – individually and as parts of consortiums – will be offering and receiving smartphone based transactions in the largest numbers yet throughout 2016.

In the U.K., a rising number of people feel that they will be using their smartphones regularly in stores.

Though mobile payments have been slow to take off, they are rapidly becoming more popular and now a new study based on a survey from Lloyds Bank has shown that many consumers feel that they will be regularly using this tech within five years from now.

In fact, one quarter of the study participants felt that by the end of 5 years, mobile phones would replace cash.

One in four participants in the U.K. study felt that between mobile payments and contactless cards, they would no longer need to carry cash. Moreover, recent statistics from Barclaycard have revealed that contactless spending in the United Kingdom is three times greater than it had been a year ago. In the Lloyds survey, conducted by Ipsos Mori, with the participation of more than 2,000 people, 43 percent of consumers agreed that technology is the way that payments are going in the future.

The survey also showed that 1 in 3 people feel that mobile payments will be used daily in five years’ time.

Over the summer, Apple Pay made its way into the U.K., drawing a considerable spotlight to the concept of mobile wallets. That said, while there are quite a few people who believe that mobile devices will become a typical payment method within the next five years, there also remains a much larger number that has stated that this technology will never become their primary choice for completing payment transactions.

According to the stats from the survey, it looks as though it is younger consumers who are more enthusiastic about the use of their mobile devices for this purpose than their counterparts who are 45 years of age or older.

When survey participants were asked about why they were not yet using mobile payments, 44 percent stated that they were not satisfied with the security or safety of the transactions. Another 18 percent said that their mobile devices were not compatible with the necessary technology, and 17 percent said that they didn’t know anything about this form of transaction.