Device-Happy Commuting Mobile Consumers Crave Connections

Mobility relies on connections. The less one gets around while transacting, the lesser the need for a multitude of apps and devices supporting “anywhere commerce.” And as much as lockdown living has hindered many connections, it’s also highlighted the need to create and sustain new ones.

How We Will Pay, a PYMNTS and Visa collaboration, surveyed a census-balanced sample of close to 9,600 consumers on how they browse and shop, closely examining the mobile consumer’s appetite for connection. In this second brief extracted from the full report, we take a quick but telling look at mobile consumers and their payments preferences going into 2021.

Observing that “commuters use 80 percent more connected devices than noncommuters to multitask commerce while on the go,” How We Will Pay – Brief II also notes that “this is especially true for consumers who commute to and from work. Our research shows that the typical commuter not only owns more connected devices than the non-commuter, but also tends to use more of those devices per day.”

An average commuter owns six connected devices and uses five of them daily for routine activities — well above the stats for those who don’t commute, How We Will Pay states.

Connected and superconnected commuters need those devices, or believe they do, for a multitude of multitasking, and also for their own gratification. “These consumers are often interested in new connected shopping experiences, such as using augmented reality to help them shop or speaking with sales associates via live video stream,” How We Will Pay – Brief II states, adding that “70 percent of surveyed commuters say they are ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ interested in new connected experiences, compared to 46 percent of noncommuters.”

With COVID flareups and ongoing lockdowns a fact of life for the moment, the report states, “it is worth noting that with fewer consumers commuting to work (39 percent) than they did a year ago (47 percent), we are starting to see a shift in the level of interest and engagement in connected experiences that give consumers access to commerce while on the go.”

Read full the full report by clicking here.

Read More On Connected Commerce:

Connected Commerce Emerges as FinTech’s Next Big Thing

Agentic AI and Tokens Make Loyalty Programs Personalized, Automated Drivers of Commerce

Regulatory Shifts and Cyberattacks Put UK Merchant Credential Storage in the Spotlight

These 3 Connected Consumer Segments Will Define Commerce’s Next Decade