First published at www.economist.com
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Some 35% of consumers use a mobile phone for making payments, and 45% use one for banking, according to a recent survey of 14 countries by ACI Worldwide, a payment systems company, and Aite Group, a research firm.
A group labelled “smartphonatics”—those who change their shopping, financial and payment behaviour as a result of owning a smartphone—are said to be driving demand for mobile financial services.
Smartphonatics are most common in developing countries (India and China), probably because of the lack of access to traditional financial services.
In India, where only 35% of adults have an account at a formal financial institution and less than 2% have a credit card, 60% are smartphonatics.
In Canada, where nearly everyone has a bank account and most people own a credit card, only 7% are smartphonatics.
One of the main reasons people gave for not making payments with their phone was the lack of capability.
But in seven of the countries surveyed, over two-thirds of consumers said they would like to replace payment cards with their mobile phone.
Read more: http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/05/focus-3