New Ipsos data shows that 4 out of 5 people around the world use smartphones in order to shop.
Consumers are now shopping on their smartphones, leading to mobile commerce gains the world has never seen before, revealed a study conducted by Ipsos and commissioned by PayPal.
At the same time that consumers are shopping on these devices, they remain concerned about security.
The poll involved the participation of 22,000 consumers around the world. It examined mobile commerce gains across all age groups. This research found that 80 percent of consumers have already shopped using a smartphone. At the same time, despite the popularity of m-commerce and shopping over mobile devices, barriers continue to remain in place.
The first among those barriers is the concern that many consumers continue to have regarding the security of purchasing via smartphone. The next challenge is the fact that only 63 percent of online shopping sites are optimized to receive mobile payments. In the U.S. specifically, 72 percent of consumers have shopped and completed a payment online, but only 57 percent of businesses have optimized to receive m-payments.
These challenges are holding back even greater mobile commerce gains, according to PayPal.
“That’s a big gap of businesses that are missing out by not taking advantage of the explosive growth of mobile commerce,” said PayPal in its report on the findings. “Businesses must offer mobile optimized experiences if they are interested in attracting and maintaining younger consumers, such as Gen Z and Gen Y.”
Giving smartphone based shopping a priority has the potential to reduce the rate of shopping cart abandonment, said PayPal in its report. Moreover, the payments company also stated that improving mobile compatibility would naturally lead to higher sales.
The reason PayPal made these claims was that the survey determined that the top reason for m-commerce shopping cart abandonment was that merchants didn’t offer the method of payment that consumers wanted to use. The survey found that 21 percent of global respondents had abandoned their intention to purchase for specifically that reason. This suggests that improving the availability of mobile friendly transaction methods could send mobile commerce gains skyward at an even faster rate than has already been observed.