A new Buyer PaymentsInsights Survey by Mercator Advisory Group examined this trend.
Mercator Advisory Group has released the outcomes of its recent Primary Data report, Buyer PaymentsInsights – Payment Behavior: Younger Shoppers Lead a Change, showing that mobile payments has become highly critical to the consumer shopping experience.
The report’s conclusions are based on Mercator’s 2020 Buyer PaymentsInsights Survey.
This online survey involved the participation of 3,000 adult consumers in the United States. It was conducted before the outbreak of the pandemic in the U.S., in February 2020. It examined the consumer shopping experience, comparing in-store purchasing with online as well as mixed channels. The purpose of the research was to define and underscore the expectations shoppers have for optimal experiences from stores.
The report indicated that no single payment method was dominant in any merchant vertical. That said, overall, debit and credit cards were used equally across each vertical. Cash was used most commonly for low-price purchases, such as at quick service restaurants and in convenience stores.
2020 has also brought a combination of debit and credit card purchases made via mobile wallet. For instance, 64 percent of Apple Pay users have a debit card in their digital wallet, and 50 percent have a credit card loaded. Among Google Pay users, the mix is somewhat different, with 65 percent having loaded a debit card and 39 percent having loaded a credit card. Samsung pay users is nearly split down the middle with 54 percent of users having loaded a debit card and another 54 percent having loaded a credit card.
Shoppers are highly likely to have one preferred method throughout their consumer shopping experience.
The research found that people often tend to choose one payment method and stick to it as the one they use the most for virtually all purchases. The proportion of Americans using a single payment method for all their transactions has actually increased since 2018.
The survey revealed that about 60 percent of Americans say they have made an online purchase cross-border at some point, the frequency of ordering outside the United States is quite low. Only 14 percent of shoppers said that cross-border purchases were “very often” a part of their consumer shopping experience. Another 7 percent said they shopped from outside the United States “often”. When buying from outside the US, 43 percent 
ordered from Asia, 38 percent bought from Europe, and 31 percent made purchases from Canada.
