Readers Speak
Why haven't mobile payments reached widespread adoption? Mobile devices are ubiquitous, so the technology is there. Is it fragmentation? Too many choices?
Carly Haladine,Haladine Consulting
Carly,
Several of our contributing writers have addressed this issue over the years. Brandes Elitch, Director of Partner Acquisition at Cross Check Inc., explored it recently in "Mobile payments, mobile wallets: Predicting consumer behavior," The Green Sheet, March 14, 2016, issue 16:03:01. Here's an excerpt:
"Remember back in 2010, all those predictions about how quickly mobile wallets would take center stage in the world of consumer payments? …. Here we are six years later, and the whole experience to date might be characterized as "notgonnahappen.com," at least not yet.
"Yes, Apple breathed new life into NFC, previously characterized as "not for commerce," but the number of consumers who use their Apple devices at merchants with fully operable NFC terminals is a miniscule percentage of POS payments. Part of this is because the consumer has to have a specific Apple device, and the merchant has to have a working NFC terminal. … A recent study by Phoenix Marketing International showed that one third of all Apple Pay credit card transactions occurred within a merchant app, not within the store. This makes sense because so few merchant locations are NFC enabled.
"Another big player is Google, with the Google Wallet card, issued by The Bancorp. … Meanwhile … there are at least 100 mobile wallets, with more being added every month. … The proliferation of wallets has caused a dilemma for the consumer: which wallet do you use at which merchant? … Banks have to decide whether to launch a standalone payment app or add mobile HCE payment capabilities to an existing bank-branded app. Banks also have to decide if they want to participate in third-party wallets, such as Apple Pay, Android Pay, Samsung Pay and CurrentC. … I think we can safely conclude that mobile wallets are still in the early-adopter stage."
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