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.