How Consumers Choose To Use Digital Wallets

Digital wallets are growing in popularity, but how do consumers want to use their new commercial tools? 

That’s the question comScore aimed to answer through their report, “Digital Wallets & Payments,” and the results may surprise you.

For example, did you know most people would prefer to simply enter a PIN or password at a store when using a wallet, rather than tapping to pay or scanning a bar code?

We take a look at some of comScore’s digital wallet breakdowns in this week’s infographic.

Digital Wallet Use: Online Or Offline?

According to the comScore report, 52 percent of consumers want to be able to use a digital wallet both online, through a browser or mobile app, and at a physical store. That means wallets like Google Wallet and PayPal have an advantage, since they offer cross-channel usage.

Fifteen percent said they’d prefer to make purchases with a digital wallet through an browser or mobile app only, while 9 percent said they’d only use one at a physical store. About a quarter (24 percent) of users indicated they weren’t sure what they prefer.

How Consumers Want To Pay In-Store

Consumers indicated that when they’re in a physical store and planning on paying with a digital wallet, 44 percent indicated they’d like to do so without directly using their phone at all. comScore notes that PayPal is currently the only wallet to offer such a service, but the process of entering your phone number and then a PIN seems more cumbersome to me than tapping a phone or having an automatic sync based on location-based technology.

Nonetheless, only 22 percent of consumers aid they’d prefer tap-and-go technology (sorry, NFC) while just 19 percent wanted an associated name and photograph to sync an account with the store and automatically deduct a payment. Finally, 15 percent like opening an app and scanning a bar code.

What Device Will Consumers Use?

Digital wallets are generally available across a number of platforms, and given how much we’ve heard about mobile recently, it’s interesting that 64 percent of consumers said they’d like to use a digital wallet on a PC or laptop while just 46 percent indicated they’d do so from a mobile phone. That percentage shrank to just 18 percent for tablets, while 24 percent said they weren’t sure.

See more comScore statistics in the full infographic below.