Tag: mobile payments us

American mobile payments are ready to go mainstream

According to Bank of America research, consumers are increasingly prepared to adopt this technology.

If Bank of America is correct, American mobile payments will be commonplace very soon. Their research suggests that consumers in the United States are increasingly ready to use this technology.

Mobile wallets are nothing new in the United States but they have yet to take off among most people.

Bank of America conducted a survey to gauge consumer opinions regarding American mobile payments. What they found was 40 percent of respondents were actively seeking out mobile wallets or already had them. This is a sizeable increase over last year’s figure. In 2015, only 34 percent of respondents felt the same way.

Clearly, there was a sharp increase in the number of actively interested Americans. This interest level is considered to be an important indicator of willingness to adopt the technology. That said, the respondents didn’t stop at simply looking into mobile payments technology.

The American mobile payments interest could move forward rapidly starting very soon.

American Mobile Payments - Bank of America Center in Austin TexasThe research determined that 57 percent of Americans would be willing to try or are already using a bank peer to peer (P2P) money transfer app.Also, 62 percent are already using mobile as their main banking method or would be willing to try it.

The active mobile app user numbers also climbed. Forty eight percent of respondents were using mobile banking apps in 2015. This year, that figure increased to 54 percent. Furthermore, Millennial interest in these mobile banking tools is very evident. That generation represents a growing proportion of shoppers as a whole. This makes their opinions on such matters highly significant.

Millennials use their smartphones more than any previous generation. In fact, 39 percent say they would prefer to interact with their mobile phones than anything or anyone else. This included their significant other! American mobile payment have the potential to become very important to this generation. Moreover, since they are one that is about to become the most important group of consumers, this information is important. After all, no matter what previous generations think, it is the Millennial opinion that will soon hold the most weight.

US and UK markets see mobile payments transactions rising

While people are using smartphone based wallets more often, it doesn’t appear to be reducing cash use.

According to the most recent digital money index issued by Citigroup in partnership with the Imperial College of London, mobile payments are rapidly becoming more popular in the United States and the United Kingdom, but the least developed countries worldwide aren’t able to use this technology to reduce the use of cash and checks every year.

The hope has been to replace cash and checks with mobile transactions because of the cost reduction.

Transactions in the form of cash and checks cost billions of dollars to maintain every year, which explains why developing nations are placing a considerable focus on mobile payments. The hope is that they will replace a large portion of the use of cash and checks; and the costs associated with those transactions. However, while mobile wallets are becoming increasingly popular in the U.S. and the U.K., they’re not having the desired impact on cash and check use in the developing world.

The report showed that there is a growing gap between the countries that are most and least ready for mobile payments.

US & UK Mobile Payments Market GrowingAccording to Sandeep Dave, the head of global digital strategy at Citigroup, “What we found this year is actually pretty stark.” He explained that “The incipient countries that have a long way to go, they almost showed a zero improvement against 2014 scores [while] the materially ready countries showed the most improvement.”

At the highest end of the index, Finland has found itself in the top spot for the third year in a row. Singapore is in second place, followed by the United States. The United Kingdom jumped upward in the index by three places in 2015 when compared to its position in 2014. This brought the U.K. to the fourth spot in the most recent index.

Mr. Dave underscored the fact that, as a whole, progress was not rapid in 2015 in terms of the adoption of mobile payments in favor of cash and checks. He stated that the most recent research from the firm indicated that the primary barrier to the use of the digital transactions was consumer attitudes as the tech, market support and digital money products and wallet apps are all essentially available where they need to be.