Mobile Payments Increasingly Accepted By Users

September 7, 2024         By: Steven Anderson

It’s hard to believe that Apple Pay has only been around for three years. Indeed, the mobile payments sector as a whole rose with the arrival of Apple Pay, and since then we’ve seen almost staggering developments in the number of services, in the range provided, and in the security protocols used to protect these services from outside intrusion. A new report from Information Age suggests that the growth has been sufficient these last couple of years to reach a “tipping point” in some markets.

The numbers spell a story of rapid growth. Seventeen percent of US consumers are regularly paying for purchases with smartphones, which has nearly tripled from the six percent seen in 2014. The numbers are similar in Europe, with 25 percent of Spaniards, 24 percent of Italians, 23 percent of Swedes and 14 percent of British users responding likewise.

Some more developing economies are even more enamored with mobile payments. India had 56 percent of customers noting that they paid with a smartphone regularly, while 51 percent in Thailand said similarly. Even 47 percent of Indonesian respondents could assert likewise.

Improved security has only helped matters here; 37 percent of respondents in the UK asserted that banks were sufficiently trustworthy to protect personal information in mobile payments, and the Dutch assented in 28 percent of cases. The French were the clear leaders in trust, however, at 40 percent.

All these numbers suggest that mobile payments are certainly no longer a novelty, and are well on their way to being a part of everyday life. It’s not quite there yet; note the downsides of the statistics. Seventy-three percent of Brits, for example, don’t really trust the banks that well, and not even the French can get a simple majority together. However, as we’ve seen, the millennials are the driving force behind mobile payments, and as more representatives of the Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation pass on, we’ll likely see those numbers increase.

So are we reaching that “tipping point”? It’s not out of line. The concept seems to gain ground with each passing year. As technology, security and usability improve, the end result seems to be a future of mobile payments.