Mobile Pay: What 74.7% of Smartphone Users are Missing Out On.
Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay. Whether you are buying a coffee, your weekly groceries, or even a $1 million Aston Martin, mobile pay is more accessible — and readily available — than ever before. The number of people in the United States using mobile pay technology is up 28% since 2017. While this level of growth is significant, the United States has actually been quite slow to adopt this technology. In China, 79.4% of smartphone users have made a mobile payment over the last six months. That number is closer to 25.3% in the U.S. Many U.S. consumers have questioned if there are enough tangible benefits of mobile payments to make the shift in their spending behavior worthwhile. Here are three reasons why digital wallets are a better payment platform and are worth making the switch.
Mobile pay is more secure for making purchases.
Anytime you pull your credit card out in public, you run the risk of exposing that private information to the world. For example, gas station pumps have been a notorious hot spot for thieves looking to prey on unsuspecting credit card users. With the use of a $20 skimmer, these thieves can steal hundreds of people’s card information every day.
With a digital wallet, there are security measures in place that make it much more difficult for your data to get stolen. When making a mobile payment, you must first authenticate your identity through Face ID or a fingerprint scanner. Your device then generates a transaction-specific dynamic security code that is sent to the merchant’s point of sale terminal. This dynamic security code is the only piece of information needed to make a payment; therefore, the mobile pay user’s card information is never actually sent during a transaction. This effectively eliminates the chance of finding yourself as one of 40 million people whose credit card information was compromised because of a merchant data breach.
Mobile pay is faster than credit and debit cards.
Making a purchase with a credit card is unnecessarily time-consuming. After digging through your purse, or wallet, to retrieve your card, you are hit with the day-old question of swipe or insert. Once you have been lectured on the proper way to pay, because you definitely did it wrong, you then have to enter your PIN, verify the amount was correct, and wait for the transaction to process. A Wall Street Journal article reports that this process takes upwards of 13 seconds from start to finish. With mobile pay, that time is cut in half with the average transaction taking only 6 seconds.
Mobile pay eliminates the possibility of losing your card.
At one point or another, we have all experienced the momentary panic of misplacing our credit or debit card. Some people have had that same feeling without realizing that their card has actually been stolen. That is — until the thief goes on a shopping spree at their expense. If you are lucky enough to catch these fraudulent transactions early, it is relatively easy to place a freeze on your account and work towards getting a new card shipped to you. If you take too long to notice, your card provider may not always be interested in helping.
This scenario is a non-issue with a digital wallet. First and foremost, a user’s facial identification or unique fingerprint is required to activate mobile pay. Even if your device falls into the wrong hands, it is nearly impossible for a thief to make a purchase from your stolen device. Secondly, with features such as Find-my-iPhone or Find-my-Device, it is now easier than ever to track down, or remotely wipe, a lost phone. While a remote wipe is certainly a last-ditch effort, you won’t have to think twice about fraudulent transactions or waiting five business days for a replacement card.
Even though digital wallets have many advantages over traditional credit and debit cards, the technology hasn’t seen widespread adoption across the United States. As this technology continues to approve, consumers become more educated on the advantages, and more merchants begin to accept mobile payments, we will likely see these numbers change.
