Gallup Says Consumers Don’t Love With Digital Wallets

The payments industry is bustling with companies launching digital wallets. From the big name players to the emerging startups — along with payment networks and banks — everyone wants a piece of the mobile payments’ pie.

There’s just one problem. Consumers don’t seem to be all that into actually using digital wallets. And a newly released analysis from Gallup gives some insight into why consumers aren’t so tuned into the digital revolution.

The research identifies the three types of customers the digital wallet companies are after: fully engaged, indifferent and actively disengaged. The trick to engaging digital wallet users is clear, the analysis suggests: Engage customers. At least that’s what the survey results show. As for banks that offer digital wallets, the survey results also show that the more engaged a customer is with their bank, the more likely they are to want to use its digital wallet.

“Customers who are more engaged with their digital wallet are more likely to use it everywhere — and every time — the option is available. Three in 10 fully engaged customers used their digital wallet every time or almost every time they could in the past 30 days, compared with 12 percent of indifferent customers and only 2 percent of actively disengaged customers. Across all types of stores studied, fully engaged customers also used their digital wallet at least six times more often in the past 30 days than actively disengaged customers,” the Gallup analysis concluded.

That survey is based upon a Gallup Panel Web study that involved 11,043 adults in the U.S., aged 18 and older, that was conducted at the end of 2014. Those results were combined with another Gallup Panel Web study that involves 6,032 adults, aged 18 and above, that concluded just after the start of 2015.

The survey results showed that the most engaged users were most likely to use their digital wallets at grocery stores (48 percent had done so in the past 30 days), along with department stores (27 percent), specialty stores (25 percent) and convenience stores (21 percent).

And what did that study conclude?

“Ultimately, the digital wallet products that will win in the marketplace will do more than make users feel special — or be helpful or easy to do business with. To increase customers’ engagement with the product and win future business, digital wallet providers must consistently deliver on their brand promises at every customer touchpoint and interaction,” the analysis stated.

And here’s why.

The analysis suggests that engaged customers not only feel privy to using the digital wallets, but they become brand ambassadors as well. And once hooked on a brand’s digital wallet, they are more likely to latch on to the next one that launches, and so on.

“For example, nearly all Apple Passbook users who are fully engaged (96 percent) say they are very likely to start using Apple Pay — Apple’s digital wallet — in the next 12 months,” the analysis concluded. “In contrast, users who are fully engaged with a competing digital wallet, such as Google Wallet or PayPal, are very unlikely to switch to Apple Pay and plan to stick with their existing product.”

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