Pew Charitable Trust Argues Mobile Payment Providers Must Promote Safety

This article in the Times Union, based on a webinar held by the Pew Charitable Trust provides demographics information on mobile concerns and then the advice that safety should be stressed:

“Banks and other mobile payment providers should do a better job of explaining safety features of the technology if they want to convince more consumers to use it, according to a new study by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

“It is something industry participants could and should talk about,” Pew research officer Joy Hackenbracht told reporters during a recent webinar.

Mobile technology allows consumers to pay for purchases at the register or online, pay bills, and send or receive money using their smartphones.

Concern about the safety of mobile transactions — including the potential for ID theft and loss of funds — “cuts across generations,” Hackenbracht said.

Nearly seven in 10 U.S. adults own a smartphone. But millennials and Gen Xers are far more likely than older age groups to have a smartphone and to use it for mobile payments, Pew said.

Some 90 percent of millennials and 83 percent of Gen Xers own a smartphone compared with 56 percent for baby boomers and 30 percent for the silent generation, the study showed. Of those, millennials and Gen Xers account for 72 percent of mobile payment users vs. 24 percent who are baby boomers and 5 percent for the oldest generation.

Mobile payment users also are more likely to live in metropolitan areas and have bank accounts and college or postgraduate degrees, Pew found.”

Mercator’s ConsumerMonitor Survey Series also identifies safety as a key concern but also indicates that concerns regarding the reliability of the mobile phone also has a role in driving consumer wariness and offers this information broken out by a range of demographics.

Overview by Tim Sloane, VP, Payments Innovation at Mercator Advisory Group

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