Millennials Use Full Range of Mobile Wallet Features

Millennials are leveraging their digital wallets for far more than just in-store purchases, PYMNTS research reveals, while other generations are more hesitant to adopt these features.

For PYMNTS’ study “The Mobile Wallet Challenge: Replacing Physical With Digital,” created in collaboration with ACI Worldwide, we surveyed a census-balanced panel of more than 2,000 U.S. consumers to understand their growing interest in using mobile wallets for more than making purchases in-store at the physical point of sale. The results reveal that, of all generations, millennials have been the quickest to adopt almost every feature, while others are more likely to hold off.

In fact, across all mobile wallet features that respondents were asked about except one, millennials were the most likely to report using said capability. For instance, millennials are about 2.5 time as likely as baby boomers and seniors to report that they use mobile wallets to store debit or credit card information from either a physical or virtual card.

This disparity may make it seem like mobile wallet adoption is simply a matter of age, but millennials are also way ahead of Gen Z when it comes to mobile wallet use. For instance, millennials are nearly 50% likelier to use a mobile wallet to pay merchants with QR codes or near-field communication (NFC) tap to pay than their younger counterparts.

More than half of all millennials reported using mobile wallets to store their cards, pay bills, transfer funds to and from bank accounts, send person-to-person payments and manage transactions. They also use them to receive push notifications, track and manage rewards and discounts, manage supplies and store ID cards, tickets, boarding passes or virtual keys.

Even in the case of the one exception to millennials’ lead, using mobile wallets to manage their household, millennials were only 0.1% less likely than the top generation, bridge millennials, to utilize the option.