Mobile Payment Survey
By: POSGuys - 7/31/2015

![POSGuys Mobile Payments Survey][1][][]
Smartphones have completely revolutionized the way we live. As mobile technology advances, things that used to be household staples such as alarm clocks, calendars and music players (even iPods) are no longer needed because smartphones do it all. And with the creation of mobile payment systems, smartphones are one step closer to becoming the all encompassing tool our ancestors dreamed of (well, maybe just the ancestors who dreamed of the future).

Before credit cards hit the scene, cash was the primary method of payment. But now, we have mobile pay. Sure, it’s a relatively new payment system and not yet ubiquitous, but that could soon change. This got us thinking — which mobile payment apps are popular and more importantly, which app is the market leader?

It was time to do some research. We surveyed over 700 university students across the United States. We wanted to know how this subset of the population viewed mobile payment systems and how they are using (or not using) them.

Before we dive into the results, let’s take a look at the survey participants. Out of 717 participants, 70% are women and 30% are men. Regardless of gender, a whopping 83% of all participants consider themselves to be tech savvy, whereas only 17% do not. Because we chose to survey college students and college bound students, 48% of participants identified as undergraduate students, 44% as high school students, 7% as graduate level or higher and only 1% identified as “other.”

Now that we know more about the survey participants, let’s get to the good stuff. We first wanted to know the brand of their main personal phone. The participants were given seven options: Apple iPhone, Google Android, Windows Phone, non-smartphone, BlackBerry, Firefox OS, and “other.” Not surprisingly, two brands dominated: Apple iPhone with 63% and Google Android with 29%. The other options were all used by less than 8% of the participants combined. It’s interesting to note that none of the participants use BlackBerry or Firefox OS.

Because mobile payment platforms are still new, we asked if the participants had heard of the following: Apple Pay, Google Wallet, PayPal Mobile, Softcard, and Current C. Turns out, 84% of the participants know about PayPal Mobile, 65% are aware of Apple Pay and 48% of Google Wallet. There was a small amount (8%) of participants who had not heard of any of these platforms. Out of the participants who had heard of the platforms, most answered that they had never used one to make a retail purchase.

However, there was a portion of the participants who had used mobile payment systems before. Within this group of individuals, we wanted to know what motivated them to start using them. The majority was split amongst two categories: “my friends were using it,” and “my phone prompted me to set it up.” Close behind was a portion of individuals who heard about the platform when it launched and decided to try it out. One thing that caught our attention was that most of these participants were not influenced by advertisements. 
Once we determined which platforms were being used, the participants were asked to rate their experience with said platform on a scale of one to five stars. Paypal Mobile, with the majority of users, received the highest average approval rating of 4.43. Though Apple Pay had significantly less users, its approval rating of 4.37 was close behind. Google Wallet produced similar results, coming in with an approval rating of 4.29.

For the participants not using mobile payment platforms, we wanted to know why they weren’t and what, if anything, could motivate them to do so. Most responded that they felt their credit/debit card was convenient and that there was no need for something else. The remaining bulk of participants either felt they didn’t know enough to switch or preferred using cash. None of them reported to be likely to start using a mobile platform within the next six months, but if a promotional offer (discount or cashback) or if all retail stores accepted the payment system, they would feel more motivated to switch over.

If you would like to learn more about our survey and the data we collected, please visit our [survey data report][2].

[1]: https://posguys.blob.core.windows.net/content/images/blog/33/mobilepayments.PNG
  [2]: https://posguys.com/surveydata

Mobile Payment Survey By: POSGuys - 7/31/2015

Recent Posts By POSGuys

Mobile Payment Survey
By: POSGuys - 7/31/2015