PYMNTS By The Numbers

Welcome to 2015!  With no more gifts to unwrap, champagne to drink or general festivities to take part in, there’s nothing left than to say good-bye to 2014 and get focused on 2015.

Well, actually, there is still one more thing to do before we fondly say good-bye to 2014: count the year off in the only way that really counts – by the numbers.  Who made the big moves, the big money and the big ideas in 2014?  Fear not, we have it all here so that during the play-off commercial breaks, you can razzle and dazzle your guests with your command of payments and retail trivia.

$2 Trillion | The Retail Spend Influence Of The World Wide Web in 2014 and 2015

In the next two years, research suggests that the web will influence $2 trillion of retail spending – and a lot of that will be done via mobile devices like tablets and iPhones.  Given the exploding value that the web is bringing to retail, it is unsurprising that over the past year, innovations and developments in the space have helped omnichannel move from buzzword to a critical merchant strategy. At the very center of that strategy is mobile – or more specifically, mobile payments, beacon technology, mPOS, the cloud, data and  apps.

And the world wide web. In 2015, it will be 26 years since Sir Timothy Berners-Lee  implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet. One has to believe that he sort of suspected the revolution it would unleash, but perhaps not the trillions of dollars of impact it would have on payments. We’ll know for sure when we ask him on March 18^th when  Berners-Lee kicks off PYMNTS 2015 Innovation Project.

4.5 Billion | The Number Of China Union Credit And Debit Cards Carried By Chinese Consumers

China is a big country with lots of people who have lots of credit and debit cards. In fact, there are some 4.5 billion credit and debit cards that carry the China Union Pay brand. Now you know why Apple and Apple Pay are so interested in working with China Union Pay. A deal with them would enable Union Pay card holders to buy goods and services in Apple’s App Store in China. Also, I’ll bet you didn’t know that Apple’s app market is the second largest in China.

That is a big deal for Chinese consumers for another reason. Using Apple Pay – and its one tap payments method – will replace the clunky three-step process that Union Pay cardholders currently use to access the Apple app store.  If a deal gets done, cardholders will be able to link their Apple ID with their UnionPay card.

That could lead to another big by-the-numbers next year. Apple already has around 800 million cards on file, the Union Pay deal could add a tidy number to that.

$1 Billion | The Value Of Gift Cards That Will Go Unclaimed This Year

Get a gift card for Christmas this year?  Better use it before you (literally) lose it. According to research by CEB Tower Group, that billion in unclaimed cards comes from consumers who physically misplace them, or those who let those last few dollars and cents get eaten up by fees.

Which makes no sense, says innovators who have popped up to make “cents” of these unwanted or unused gift cards.  PayPal, Google, Apple, The Level Up, Startbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts,  Softcard and Loop are just a few of the dozens of digital wallets that allow users to store their gift cards digitally. Some even allow you to redeem the ones consumers really hate for dollars to be spent at the merchants that accept them.   

What remains to be seen is whether all those digital wallets will help more of that billion get spent in 2014.

~300 Million | The Number Of Hits “Apple Pay” Gets On Google

On the last day of 2014, a search of the term “Apple Pay” yielded 297,000,000 results.  A search of Google News pulled up a more conservative result of about 20 million.   The New York Times wrote 23 articles that featured Apple Pay in the headline, The Washington Post wrote 28  and The Wall Street Journal wrote 43.

84.1 Million | Qiandaibao’s (Chinese mPOS Start-Up) Daily Transaction Volume

Don’t know who or what Qiandaibao is?  It’s a Chinese  mPOS start-up that is but one of many start-ups taking root in emerging countries and recreating commerce.  As developing nations worked on getting their mPOS groove on, increasing card acceptance at new locations in countries that were already accepting of credit, debit card and bank to bank account payments was the main goal of these developing country mPOS pioneers.

Apart from Qiandaibao’s big year, India’s Ezetap now serves more than 6 million villages and is converting mPOS terminals into micro-ATMs for cash out, in addition to offering traditional payment acceptance.  Sweden’s iZettle has expanded into 50,000 users in the Mexican market and Sum Up continued its development in Latin America and Brazil.

1 Million | The Number Of Rides Per Day Uber Is Giving

Until fairly recently, Uber had been very tightlipped about the exact numbers that define its success, but  the world’s favorite ride-sharing service offered the world a peek behind the curtain with a mid-December blog post.

The numbers came tucked into a long blog post about the company’s new safety initiatives, which discussed changes Uber will explore after one of its drivers allegedly raped a passenger in India and a U.S. based driver was accused of kidnapping a passenger headed to a hotel in Boston.  The safety complaints come as the company faces several nations and local jurisdictions trying to lock them out and a wave of negative headlines questioning some of the decisions made by Uber’s executive team.

Despite the tough road they traveled in 2014, the results are impressive. Uber expanded into 53 nations, 250 cities and secured over $1 billion in funding on a valuation north of $40 billion.

761 | The Number Of Known Data Breaches in 2014

Wow. That is all we have to say when seeing this number.

So, it wasn’t exactly the best imaginable year for data security.  At least 100 million credit and debit card numbers were compromised in point-of-sale retail hacks, though that number is almost certainly higher, since 56 million of those card numbers came of out Home Depot, 40 million from Target, 2.6 million from  from Michaels and ~1.2 million were hacked out of Staples.

The exact numbers from Bebe, Kmart, Dairy Queen, Jimmy John’s, P.F. Chang’s, Jewel-Osco, Shaw’s, ACME, Neiman Marcus, and Albertson’s (among 748 others) remain unknown.

500 | The Number Of Beacons It Takes To Freak Out New Yorkers

An early October 2014 investigation by BuzzFeed unearthed a major concern they had about the use of beacon technology.  The story documented a NYC advertising firm that planted about 500  beacons on the side of NYC phone booths without  informing the public.

Twelve hours later, the beacons were taken down, but concerns were already raised – what exactly are beacons and just how are they being used?

The answer…

“We’re seeing retailers and events using it [beacon technology] for customer service-oriented issues more than anything else,” said Bill Schneider, director of product marketing for Urban Airship, a mobile marketing company. “Marketing was centered on advertising for the past 100-plus years, but as consumer screens become more intimate, those old advertising methods are becoming less effective.”

Beacon defenders note that beacons can’t just reach out and touch one’s phone;  generally speaking, the beacon enabled notification must go through apps that consumers download and that can be deleted if and when the push notifications become too onerous.

46 | The Percentage That Oil Prices Fell In 2014

It might not be immediately obvious why PYMNTS.com would care a lick about falling oil prices, but as it turns out, paying less for gas, particularly in the back end of the year, seems to have possibly juiced retail sales in 2014.

Retail sales jumped 0.7 percent, to $449.3 billion in November from the previous month, and 4.9 percent above the same period a year ago, according to Commerce Department figures.

Retail sales, excluding automobiles and gasoline, which are considered to be volatile, rose 0.6 percent last month after an unrevised 0.5 percent rise in October.

“The 0.7 percent month-over-month rise in U.S. retail sales in November is even better than we expected and shows we were right to dismiss all those reports about how weak holiday sales were. The truth is that the rises in employment and real incomes have allowed households to spend freely at the start of the holiday shopping season,” Paul Dales, senior economist at Capital Economics, said in a research note.

2.6 | The Average Number Of Credit Cards Owned By All Americans 

A Gallup survey conducted in April 2014 found that Americans are reportedly carrying fewer credit cards than ever.  Important to note about the finding that, on average, Americans have  2.6 cards is that the figure includes those who carry no cards into the average.   Among Americans with credit cards, the average number of cards owned is 3.7.

The number of Americans without credit cards increased in 2014; now 29 percent are turning down the (non-debit) plastic, and that’s up from 22 percent in 2008. The largest percentage carry two cards, 33 percent. Eighteen percent have three or four cards, 9 percent have five or six cards, and 7 percent had seven or more cards.

The number of Americans who are turned down for cards is increasing too. Seven percent of consumers were rejected for a new card in 2014, up for a little over 4 percent in 2013.

And that was 2014 by the numbers.