Retailers Believe Cash and Credit Cards Will Lose Payments Share to Mobile

March 12, 2013

This article is included in these additional categories:

Mobile Phone | Retail & E-Commerce

RSR-Retailers-Primary-Payment-Forms-Mar2013While almost two-thirds of retailers report that credit cards (45%) and cash (19%) are their primary payment forms today, less than half believe that will be the case in 3 years, according to [download page] results from an RSR Research survey. Instead, fully 19% expect mobile or digital payments to be their primary payment form in 3 years time, a dramatic change from just 1% who report them to be their primary form this year.

Retailers are obviously expecting a lot to happen in the next 3 years, but recent studies suggest such as large shift isn’t yet happening. Figures released last month showed that while consumer awareness of digital wallets remain low, the number of credit card transactions – and the dollar value of those transactions – each grew by 8.7% in 2012.

According to the RSR Research study, the top payments business challenge cited by retailers is uncertainty around the technical future of payments (standards, mobile, digital, etc.), although many recognize that consumer adoption of technology dictates which payment types they must support. And while retailers see big changes afoot, those very changes make for organizational challenges too. Asked their top 3 organizational inhibitors, 7 in 10 retailers surveyed said the industry is still fighting for dominant players and they’re waiting for the dust to settle. 6 in 10 agreed that the technology is changing too fast and they don’t want to invest in something that is obsolete.

A majority of mobile payments industry leaders believe that improving customers’ retail experiences will be the main driver of a successful mobile payments scheme, according to new survey results from SAP. The “secret sauce” for those improved experiences include location-based point-of-sale (POS) offerings (24%), POS services such as near-field communications (28%), and assisting in the universal acceptance of mobile payments (25%).

About the Data: RSR conducted an online survey from December 2012 to January 2013 and received answers from 98 qualified retail respondents. 40% are C-suite execs, 43% come from organizations with $1 billion or more in 2011 revenue, and 58% are headquartered in the US.

The SAP survey was conducted on-site at the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona, Spain, with responses collected from February 25-26. The survey included 300 respondents, representing a cross-section of attendees, including mobile operators (14 percent), fixed telecommunication operators (12 percent), OTT players (nine percent), vendors (22 percent) and other mobile industry leaders (43 percent). Respondents represented a wide swath of geographies including Europe, the Middle East, Africa (60 percent), the Americas (25 percent) and Asia (15 percent).

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