Romania has highest mobile payments use of all Central and Eastern European Countries

Mobile payments - Romania Flag

A recent Visa regional study found that Romanians have the greatest preference to use their phones to pay.

Visa recently conducted a regional study on preferred transaction methods and found that Romania had the highest preference for using mobile payments among all eight Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries.

The adoption rate for the country was the highest, with about 7 of 10 people using this method.

The regional study showed that among CEE countries, Romania had the highest mobile payments adoption rate. Seven in 10 people in the country were using smartphones to complete transactions while shopping online. Another 1 in 3 Romanians used their smartphones to pay for products and services while in store.

Mobile payments - Payments in store

The study included data from Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. It was conducted as a part of a collaboration with the Kantar data analytics company. The study included the participation of 1,000 people from each country, each of whom were aged 18 years through 65 years old. Participants who chose to use their phones to pay for what they purchased liked how fast and comfortable it was to use a tap or two to buy whatever they wanted.

Romanians also use their phones for other shopping habits aside from mobile payments.

Among Romanian consumers, 83 percent chose to look for the products and services they wanted by using their phones. Another 79 percent ordered products and services on their smartphones. A further 81 percent of Romanians use their devices to pay.

Among those who complete transactions with their phones, 46 percent do so for food delivery, 39 percent pay for transportation, 35 percent pay for travel, and 35 percent pay for streaming platform apps. According to Visa, over the last five years, it has invested $10 billion into network security and has managed to block approximately $7.2 billion in fraudulent transaction attempts so far.

“When someone enters their card details into a mobile wallet on a device, Visa replaces them with a unique set of numbers. This technology is called tokenization and provides an additional level of security,” explained Visa country manager for Romania, Elena Ungureanu in a statement about the mobile payments study results. “Not only are mobile payments secure, but they are easy to use even by those with basic knowledge of using mobile devices.”

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