In their new market report “Global Mobile Payment Methods: Second Half 2017,” Germany-based desk research specialist yStats.com reveals that one in three global consumers with an Internet connection now uses mobile payment services. Asia-Pacific has taken the lead in mobile payment adoption, while consumers’ concern over security of mobile payments is still pronounced in many countries of the world.
Mobile payment adoption is rising worldwide, with a third of Internet users surveyed in 2017 having used mobile payment services, according to recent research cited in the yStats.com publication. Mobile payment user penetration among connected consumers is the highest in Asia-Pacific, where over half a billion individuals made payments via mobile devices in China alone. Mobile wallets have become a popular settlement method in Asia’s emerging markets and are also gaining acceptance in advanced economies of the region, such as Japan and South Korea.
In other global regions, mobile payments are also on the growth path. In Europe, Scandinavian markets are leading in proximity mobile payment penetration, followed by the UK, as of 2018. Mobile payment services such as Swish, MobilePay and Vipps ranked as some of the most popular ways for consumers in Sweden, Denmark and Norway to pay for online purchases in 2017, according to surveys cited in the yStats.com report. In the USA, both awareness and usage of mobile payments were in the double-digits last year, with PayPal, Apple Pay, Android Pay, Samsung Pay and other mobile wallets used not only for online shopping, but also for making payments in-store. In Latin America, around one-quarter of Internet users made mobile payments, while in Africa mobile money services reached new heights in terms of usage during 2017.
Despite this solid growth, data in the yStats.com report also shows that fears over security of mobile payments still persist. More than 50% of global Internet users believed that making payments via mobile was not safe. Even in countries with above average mobile payment usage, such as Sweden, mobile payment methods are valued for convenience and ease of use, but are not perceived as the safest way to make payments.
