European shoppers more willing to make purchases with their smartphones when banks lead the way - report

According to a recent research, six in ten UK smartphone users (57 percent) would feel more confident buying goods and services by mobile if they could use apps provided by their bank. This confidence is even stronger among Spanish consumers at 68 percent while 50 percent of smartphone owners in Germany feel the same way. Furthermore, more than 50 percent of UK respondents are already buying goods on their smartphones.

The report has also found that leading factors likely to prompt UK consumers to buy products and services via a bank app include ease-of-use at 60 percent, incentives such as loyalty schemes at 49 percent, direct insights from their bank on the state of their finances and budgets at 46 percent and convenience at 37 percent. More than half of those surveyed would trust sites endorsed by a bank, varying from 51 percent in Germany and 57 percent in the UK to 68 percent in Spain.

Also among the findings, smartphone shoppers say they are more open to buying higher value items if it can be done through a bank app. Tickets for travel such as flights and trains were the most popular items cited, at 65 percent, 47 percent and 45 percent among Spanish, German and UK consumers respectively. Tickets for services such as entertainment and sporting events were the second most popular items.

The study has also found that the experiences most liked by UK consumers when using smartphones to buy are: ease-of-use (69 percent), speed (51 percent), using a known and trusted brand (43 percent), search (30percent) and access to discounts (19 percent). Additionally, leading factors that would encourage UK consumers to buy via their smartphone in order of preference are confidence in the security of the transaction and security of the phone at 50 percent and 51 percent respectively, engaging with trusted brands at 30 percent, access to offers and promotions at 27 percent and the increased convenience relative to personal computers at 26 percent.

Finally, the report has found that on a scale of one to five, checking bank balances was ranked as the single most important additional service for consumers to connect to prior to making a purchase and more important than being able to access price comparison sites or peer reviews. Some 48 percent of UK consumers who own smartphones want to research, plan and organise their finances using their mobiles, compared with 53 percent in Spain and 54 percent in Germany.

The report titled ‘M-commerce: What consumers want from financial institutions’, has been published by the Future Foundation and commissioned by Monitise.