24 percent of smartphone owners use m-payment apps for purchases - report

According to a recent report from PunchTab, an omni-channel engagement and insights platform, for the above 24% smartphone users, the two most popular mobile payment apps were the Starbucks App (29%) and Google Wallet (25%), with Visa Checkout (10%), PayPal Wallet (9%), Square Wallet (6%), Apple Pay (4%), SoftCard (2%) and others (15%) trailing the leaders.

The PunchTab study points out that the Starbucks App has set the bar for mobile payment apps. With 29% of the market share amongst mobile wallet users, 66% of Starbucks App users were concerned with the speed of checkout, 65% wanted automatic points earned in stores loyalty programs and 59% wanted to receive special coupons or offers within the app. Non-Starbucks App users were most concerned with the speed of checkout when using a mobile payment app (50%). The second greatest concern of non-Starbucks App users was eliminating the need to carry cash or credit cards (54%), but only 38% of Starbucks App users thought this was a priority.

The report also adds that consumers prefer to have a unified mobile payment app that can be used in multiple stores while integrating individual store coupons and loyalty programs among millennials (55%) and users 35 years and up (46%) alike. However, 34% of consumers werent even aware if their favourite stores offered mobile payments or not.

The research reveals that some of the top reasons consumers dont use mobile payment apps include the fact that consumers are fine with traditional payment methods and dont see a reason to use mobile payment apps; similarly, consumers anticipate difficulty downloading or using mobile payment apps and would rather not deal with it; users are also concerned with data security when using mobile payment apps.

The report has focused on mobile payment trends among different consumer groups and various mobile payment options and it has surveyed more than 1,000 consumers across various demographics to find out which mobile payment apps were the most popular, which mobile payment features are most important to users and what consumers would like to see in future mobile payment apps.