Companies accepting this form of transaction are seeing improved loyalty from consumers.
Retailers are getting ready for their pre-Black Friday sales that will all be a build toward the big day, something that hasn’t been seen in two years in many parts of the country, and mobile wallet trends are being taken very seriously.
Merchants across the country have seen a dramatic trend toward contactless payments.
As lockdowns and stay-at-home orders eased from the pandemic crisis, consumers heading back into stores have shown a substantial preference toward contactless payment methods when compared to pre-pandemic behaviors. This has included the use of mobile wallets more than was the case even a year ago. This leaning toward a new way of paying has also opened up other forms of behavior that have been quite lucrative to retailers offering the types of transaction methods their customers want.
According to the most recent edition of the Next-Gen Debit Tracker, PYMNTS examined trends toward contactless debit payments, smartphone-based payments and how retailers are benefitting from offering this technology to their customers. What retailers have found is that when the opportunity to pay via smartphone is available, many consumers choose that method, and loyalty is rising along with it.
Moreover, the report also forecasts that mobile wallet payments growth will only continue.
In fact, the report indicates that smartphone-based payments are expected to overtake the use of contactless cards at some point in 2023. Retailers looking to get the most out of this Black Friday and holiday shopping season are paying attention and if they haven’t already got the technology in place, they are scrambling to do so.
Offering options such as PayPal, Apple Pay, and even Venmo as a contactless card alternative is expected to rise by 92 percent, said the report, with a great deal of this trend being credited to tokenization and a rise in cross-channel payment abilities in many mobile wallets and wearable technology gadgets.
Retailers in the US were given the opportunity to see exactly how powerful this trend was during the back-to-school shopping season. Now, as the holiday season approaches, they are looking to benefit again, boosting loyalty both in advance and during the most important shopping season of the year.