90 Per Cent of Smartphone Users Would Use Mobile Payment

More than 90 per cent of smartphone users are willing to use mobile payment technologies for purchases and other money transmission, according to a survey by strategy consultants Simon-Kucher & Partners.

The report, based on a consumer discovery panel, found that customers were prepared to pay up to £3 as a fixed fee to download a mobile wallet.

The research explored five different types of mobile payment: contact-less or NFC, country-dependent peer-to-peer, location-independent, app-based purchases, location-dependent wallet-to-account purchases over 3G or wireless networks and overseas remittance.

Respondents were most inclined to try contact-less payments, with 65 per cent willing to do so, while overseas remittance was the least popular at 36 per cent.

The report underlines that “smartphones are the gateway to digital payment usage”. While 92 per cent of smartphone users are willing to try mobile payments, only 68% of non-smartphone users are.

Currently just over 50% of smartphone owners use eWallets and 23 per cent use mWallets, compared to 39 per cent of non-smartphone owners using eWallets and 11 per cent mWallets.

Ben Snowman, director of the banking division of Simon-Kucher and author of the study, says: “Smartphone users are clearly more advanced in their use of digital payment formats. In part, this may be due to the ease of access that smartphone users have to mobile applications giving them the ability to make payments. However, the differences in the willingness to use mobile payments clearly demonstrates that smart phone users do have a distinct mind set. For mobile payments to take off, banks, telecoms providers, merchants - all the beneficiaries - would do well in promoting the uptake of smart

phones.”