The latest development in the world of mobile is that Google is about to unveil its version of the “electronic wallet” which will allow users to make payments at selected retail outlets at the wave of a mobile phone. This follows the announcement it made
recently that it is working with MasterCard to incorporate near-field technology (which offers a payment capability) to its Android phones.
The news from Google coincides with a great deal of recent market announcements, including Orange and Barclaycard’s new Quick Tap service and O2 outlining details of its mobile wallet out later this year. All of these developments highlight the growing momentum
behind the mobile financial services.
With all this manoeuvring by telecoms and financial services players, however, a critical question is whether consumers will actually take up the service. Well, according to a recent YouGov survey, demand does exist for wave and pay, with two in five smartphone
users keen to use their mobile as their wallet. The survey found that male smartphone users are more likely to want to swipe their phone to make a payment (47%) while over a third of female smartphone users (37%) are interested in this contactless capability.
Interestingly, out of the smartphone operating systems, iPhone users are most inclined to use their phone as a wallet with 56% saying they would like to ‘wave and pay’. This means that if Apple does decide to include the chip that enables contactless payments
in the new iPhone 5, it could be poised to take a large share of the mobile payments market, with the iPhone currently the second most popular smartphone in the UK. Also, 42% of BlackBerry users said they would like to swipe their phones to buy goods however
this desire was less fervent among Android smartphone users (40%) – note to Google.
Overall, these statistics provide important guidance to banks embarking on their mobile strategy and demonstrate that there is a need to consider developing apps for numerous mobile platforms. Proving the business case is often the biggest barrier to investment
in innovation like mobile banking but these figures show that consumer demand is strong in the UK market.