Adobe Releases New Study on Voice and Mobile Payments-Related Shopping

August 8, 2024         By: Steven Anderson

Not long ago, we got word from Paysafe about their recently-concluded study on voice-based systems and their impact on mobile payments and shopping. Now, we’ve got some fresh word in from Adobe, which on some notes offered backing to the Paysafe study while producing some results all its own.

Adobe settled in with 1,000 voice technology users and sought to find what they thought on a range of issues. Right away, we discovered that ease-of-use was huge among voice technology users, with 94 percent considering voice technology both simple and convenient. Its hands-free nature and time savings potential were also strongly cited.

Plus, voice technology isn’t exactly scaring users off; 50 percent, on average, were not at all hesitant to start using voice technology, while about another quarter didn’t know if they were hesitant, leaving just over a quarter feeling some trepidation.

The study found that shopping is still a somewhat lesser-used function of voice-based systems; just 16 percent cited its use in shopping and 15 percent did likewise in ordering food. Eight percent used it for banking, and six percent involved it in booking travel.

This compares terribly to the 52 percent using it for driving directions and the 51 percent using it to make phone calls. The biggest reason for the dropoff cited on those lesser-used functions is “complexity of task,” meaning voice-based tech just can’t keep up with the demand for many users.

This does dovetail well with the Paysafe study, which found that customers were eager to use voice-based systems to shop for items of lower value, but not near so much for big-ticket items. However, while the Paysafe study demonstrated one clear use for mobile payments, the Adobe study illustrates that there are many more potential uses to emerge. Note the weakness in mobile banking, and other shopping fronts like ordering food. If the technology can catch up and make a complex task simpler, then it stands to reason it’s got more room than expected to win on fronts it may never have even considered.

Voice-based technology is still in its early days, and if the Paysafe and Adobe studies have taught us nothing, it’s that there’s nowhere to go here but up in terms of use cases and overall use numbers.