Mobile Payments: Closing The Gap Between Awareness And Adoption In 2016

By Chris Allen, Director, Demand Generation & Channel Marketing, Vantiv Integrated Payments (formerly Mercury Payment Systems)

Industry forecasts about mobile payments all basically point to the same conclusion — mobile payments adoption is going to increase in 2016, and for the next several years. eMarketer, for example, forecasts a whopping 210 percent growth in the total value of mobile payment transactions in 2016 — up to $27.05 billion from $8.71 billion in 2015. Overwhelming consumer mobile device usage is largely responsible, as well as the budding standardization of mobile wallet technology. But perhaps the main catalyst for mobile payments growth is that broader awareness and availability coincide with the EMV chargeback liability shift that took place in the last quarter of 2015.   

Though the first mobile wallets like Google Wallet began to emerge in 2011, mobile payments haven’t yet reached widespread consumer adoption.  Apple’s release of ApplePay in 2014 helped increase consumer awareness, and stood to make huge gains in the payments space due to widespread consumer iPhone ownership.  But over a year later, ApplePay usage rates remain low. Pymnts.com reports that as of June 2015, only 13 percent of eligible ApplePay users had tried the service.

Since 2011, the market has seen the launch of dozens of mobile wallets with big tech brands like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, PayPal, and Square garnering the most attention.  Many of these early wallets relied on niche technology and required customized point of sale (POS) integrations for acceptance. Some only accepted certain bank cards and only worked with certain POS integrations that only a handful of merchants implemented.  But major mobile developments in 2015 seem to indicate a move towards standardization across mobile wallet technologies.

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