Estimates have shown that smartphone penetration in Western Europe has reached around 25 percent.
The latest estimates from eMarketer have been released and they are showing that although 25 percent of Western European consumers have smartphones, mobile payments are still lagging behind in Sweden where penetration is higher.
SBAB Bank data from August and September showed that penetration in Sweden is at 67 percent.
However, even though Swedish consumers are more than twice as likely to have smartphones than their average European counterparts, mobile payments still aren’t picking up very quickly. The technology is available but consumers are not using it to make their purchases in stores.
It appears that Swedish consumers are not yet convinced that mobile payments are worth their while.
Even back in May 2012, when Google released its “Our Mobile Planet: Sweden” report, it determined that the country still had a much greater penetration of smartphones than other Western European countries. In Q1 of this year, it was estimated that Sweden’s penetration had reached 51 percent.
SBAB believes that smartphone users in Sweden aren’t convinced that it is a good idea to start using their devices for mobile payments purposes while shopping in stores. Only 34 percent of the eMarketer respondents stated that they would like to be able to use their devices for making purchases in stores.
Furthermore, 49 percent of the respondents said that they were not at all interested in using mobile payments while in store. Another 17 percent hadn’t yet made up their mind what they felt about transactions using these devices.
These potential shoppers expressed that the main hesitation that they felt about mobile payments had to do with concerns regarding security. In fact 58 percent of the respondents said that they were worried about security issues having to do with the technology if it were used for financial transactions. Another 40 percent said that they didn’t want to have to pay additional costs or fees for using their smartphones in this way.
It is believed that service providers and stores could help to put concerns about mobile payments fees at ease by posting their policies more clearly and being transparent about any associated costs, but the privacy issue fears could take longer to ease.
