A third of all shoppers in the United States use their smartphones or tablets to pay for things.
IDC has just released the results of its 2012 Consumer Payments Survey and has determined that 33 percent of Americans had used mobile payments.
The majority of these transactions were through iTunes, PayPal Mobile, and Amazon.
This survey included purchases and bill payments made by way of smartphones or tablets for buying digital goods, making contactless payments through NFC technology, and apps that allow devices to become a mobile payments channel alternative to more conventional methods such as debit and credit cards.
The survey showed that debit is the most common type of mobile payments.
The research findings indicated that 33 percent of the respondents had already used a mobile payments in some form at least once. Over half (56 percent) of those individuals had used PayPal Mobile, while around 40 percent had used iTunes and Amazon Payments.
What was surprising about the outcome of the survey – which was the eighth annual research of this nature to have been performed by IDC – was that it showed that more of the participants reported making purchases of physical products using their smartphones, instead of digital goods – such as music or apps – or virtual currency.
According to the IDC Financial Insights practice director, Aaron McPherson, “Based on our results, we expect to see continued growth in open-loop prepaid cards and mobile payments next year, and believe that the improvements being offered in electronic bill delivery will break electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) out of its doldrums as well.”
The number of individuals in the United States who are using mobile payments, according to the survey, has doubled from last year to this year. Beyond the use of smartphones, it also determined that the internet in general is the most popular way for Americans to pay their bills. This is the second year in a row that both bank and biller operated online billing websites were used by over half of all of the survey’s respondents. The results showed that 73.5 percent of consumers in the U.S. use at least one site to pay their bills.
