Commentary

Ease Of Use Is Key For M-Payments Adoption

The vision of consumers whipping out their mobile phones to pay for everything from groceries to high-end purchases at checkout is still far from a reality. Outside of a few exceptions like Starbucks and a mobile-only service like Uber, mobile payments haven’t caught on with consumers. Not surprisingly, younger people (18-34) tend to be the early adopters when it comes to mobile payments, according to a presentation by Ravi Viswanathan, Client Services Director, Nielsen, at the OMMA mCommerce conference.

They also tend to be multicultural (33%), and skew a bit more toward iOS than Android, 50% to 45%. PayPal, Google Wallet and MasterCard’s PayPass are the most popular m-payments services to date. Viswanathan emphasized that recommendations from friends and family are especially influential in choosing a service. More than half %55%) of Uber users, for example, learned of it from a personal tip.

To get any traction, a payments offering has to be easy to use and a quick way to pay. “These are the table stakes,” said Viswanathan. Among non-users, 64% said they were likely or very likely to use m-payments, and 70% expected to do so in the next six months. 

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