Retale Survey: 61 Percent of Shoppers Want to Use Mobile Payments

Just how important are mobile payments to this holiday shopping season, anyway?

While current word suggests an importance that’s either vital or trivial, a new report from Retale is tipping the scales toward the vital. The report starts out with a bombshell: 61 percent of shoppers want to put mobile payments to work this holiday season, and that’s up from 56 percent last year.

With that increased interest, meanwhile, comes plenty of other exciting news about this rapidly growing sector.

Retale polled over 1,000 adults in the United States, and found that not only is there growing interest, there’s also growing use. Forty-three percent of shoppers have used a mobile payment system this year for shopping, and that’s up from 36 percent in last year’s figures.

A growing number of shoppers think that mobile payment should be offered at their shop of choice, as 63 percent agreed with that sentiment this year. That’s up from 57 percent last year. Shoppers even find mobile payments more convenient, with 76 percent saying so last year and 83 percent saying so this year.

There are still some concerns, though; issues of privacy and security are still front-of-mind for 59 percent of consumers, and that’s a point that hasn’t changed since last year despite the growing number of protection measures undertaken by developers.

Theft or loss of the mobile device itself is also a factor for 55 percent of respondents; presumably, people figure the more often a device is removed from a pocket and used, the more likely it is to be left behind inadvertently or to wind up a target for thieves.

Perhaps most interesting is that, while Apple Pay has made serious inroads in the short time it’s been around—just over a year—it takes about 20 percent of the user market. Android Pay came in next at 17 percent, and retailer-specific apps were front-and-center for 13 percent.

The clear winner in the field, with almost a simple majority of users at 50 percent even, was PayPal. Rounding out the top five at 27 percent was “Your bank’s mobile payment app,” which naturally varied from user to user.

This suggests some users are turning to multiple apps, reasonable given that retailer apps are in there that can offer loyalty program incentives to put same to work.

It’s clear that mobile payments are a big part of holiday shopping, and not only have been for some time but also likely will be for the foreseeable future.

A clear opportunity has presented itself for mobile payment operations: a focus on the security aspect of things—potentially backed by a money-back guarantee and credit monitoring in the event of data breach—may be a big winner with a clearly hesitant portion of the market. There’s not much that mobile payments vendors can do about the lost or stolen device part, though, at least not at first blush.

Still, interest is clearly afoot, and those offering mobile payments systems still have plenty of time to take advantage of this holiday shopping season’s interested shoppers. Plus, there’s lots of time to get ready for next season, and that could be a real advantage in the making.