Though it would be easy to assume Millennials would be the heaviest users, they’re surprisingly not.
It’s easy to think of the most common users of digital commerce and transaction tools as being from the Millennial generation, but when it comes to grocery shopping, Generation X has taken the lead in using mobile payments.
When shopping in supermarkets for the food they’ll prepare, Gen X often uses phones to pay.
In the United States, over 9 percent of Gen Xers are using mobile payments and commerce to purchase their groceries on a regular basis. That is a substantial one third higher than the same trend among Millennials. Moreover, it is three times the percentage in the Baby Boomer and other senior generations.
This data was released in the “Tracking the Digital Payments Takeover: Biometric Authentication in the Age of Mobile” report recently issued by PYMNTS Intelligence and Amazon Web Services in a recent collaboration.
Millennials and Gen Z have the highest exposure to mobile payments, but Gen X uses it the most.
According to the report, the reason for the trend can be explained quite simply. While people in the Millennial generation and in Gen Z have the highest exposure to digital services and transactions, they are not yet the generation that most commonly shops for their households. Gen X is still grocery shopping far more than those younger generations.
That said, this trend isn’t expected to last long. Millennials and Gen Z are increasingly shopping for food, and they are doing so in omnichannel patterns. For instance, 72 percent of individuals from those generations had used a grocery store app within the 12 months prior to the report. They mainly used those applications to find the best deals.
Moreover, while Gen X is using mobile payments most commonly in the grocery category, Millennials are by far the biggest generation to use their devices for purchasing non-grocery items. Almost 15 percent of Millennials use mobile commerce, which is almost double the trend among Boomers and senior generations.
Also noted in the report was that shopping on a smartphone boosts impulse shopping, meaning Gen Z were most likely to make impulse purchases, whereas Baby Boomers were most likely to know exactly what they want, use a list, and stick to it.