This article in eMarketer indicates that consumers that think retailers should offer mobile payments in-store at checkout has increased 6% in 2015 and that 7% more also stated they conducted a mobile payment. This seems dismal considering 2015 was resplendent with product introductions and advertising by the likes of Starbucks, Target, Walmart, Apple, Samsung, MasterCard, Visa, Amex, and every major bank in the US that combined must have exceeded a billion dollars to tell consumers how safe and convenient a mobile payment is:
“In some respects, shoppers’ attitudes toward mobile payments had changed over the past year. For example, they were 7 percentage points more likely to say in 2015 that they had used mobile payments for in-store purchases—unsurprising consideringoverall mobile proximity payments adoption trends.
Internet users were also 6 percentage points more likely in 2015 to say that retailers should offer mobile payments at the checkout. Similarly, they were 7 percentage points more likely to say that mobile payments were convenient.
But they weren’t actually more interest in using such payments, at least not during the holiday season. That percentage stayed the same, at just over half—and, of course, less than half of respondents actually had followed through on such plans last year.”
The article identifies 2016 as the breakthrough year for mobile payments to take off, but with mobile payments being Balkanized with different solutions from merchants, banks, device manufacturers, and even from app developers, one wonders how any sustainable momentum can be achieved. This is especially true if the acceptance footprint doesn’t expand as others have predicted. Mercator expects NFC acceptance will remain a problem even as we enter 2017.
Overview by Tim Sloane, VP, Payments Innovation at Mercator Advisory Group
