Adyen: More Than One in Four Web Transactions Are Mobile

Mobile shopping these days is becoming a big deal a lot more rapidly than online shopping itself did. According to new reports from Adyen, mobile commerce is well on track to be bigger than online shopping itself, and in fairly short order too.

The Adyen Mobile Payments Index spelled out the unlikely truth: when it comes to Adyen’s customer base, 26 percent of transactions seen therein are mobile transactions.

This actually represents the first time that the total has crossed the 25 percent mark since Adyen started publishing the quarterly index report back in June of 2013, meaning that it only took about a year and a half for mobile payments to reach that point.

Adyen’s chief commercial officer, Roelant Prins, offered up some comment on the study’s results, noting that there were gains to be had throughout the sector, including retail, ticket purchases, gaming, and even digital goods outright as a variety of businesses saw success in offering up material for purchase via mobile devices.

Prins elaborated, noting that “…a mobile-first strategy is becoming a reality for more businesses as we move into Q1 2015.”

The numbers continued to tell the story, as the 25 percent barrier had been getting closer with each passing quarter since at least the fourth quarter of 2013, when it hit 18.8 percent and moved on to the third quarter of 2014, when it reached 23.3 percent.

Mobile purchases became progressively more likely, and seemed to reach a fever pitch at specific times of year. For China, the Singles’ Day event proved the biggest hit, and for the United States, it was the Black Friday / Cyber Monday period, as well as the month of December in general.

Meanwhile, iPhones and iPad showed little difference; the iPad held 34 percent of the total with the iPhone almost matching it at 32.3 percent, and Android phones made substantial gains at 25.3 percent, up from 20 percent in the fourth quarter of 2013.

There are, of course, individual lessons to take away from this study.

Apple is still the king for mobile purchases, but at the rate things are going it may have to share a crown before too much longer, particularly if Android’s rate of ascent holds static.

The iPad, additionally, may lose ground, especially given that the phablet-style release of the iPhone 6 Plus is generating a lot of interest in the form factor.

But the key takeaway here really is that mobile payments are gaining plenty of ground as a whole, and gaining it in rapid fashion. Look how little time it took to go from 18.8 percent to 26 percent; this is a very slim amount of time in which to make gains of that scope, and clearly, this is a market with plenty of opportunity on hand for those who take advantage.

Though this is just the numbers from Adyen being discussed here, if it applies to the larger market as well, even in part, there will still be clear lessons to draw here, and said lessons should prove much the same as just working from Adyen’s numbers.

Those who have yet to take advantage, meanwhile, should be considering this study as a wake-up call; it’s clear the market is going increasingly mobile, and while the rest of the online market can scarcely be ignored, neither can the rapidly growing mobile market.