Mobile Payments Driving Global M-Commerce Adoption

January 24, 2014 – MEF recently released the results of its 13-country study on consumer behavior in mobile payments and banking. The study, aggregating data from 10,000 respondents, reveals that 15% of mobile users made a purchase with their device in 2013 and 7% made a purchase using mobile wallet technology, such as Near Field Communications (NFC).

MEF states that mobile money users specifically are important as they are 10% less likely to make low-value payments, 12% more likely to scan barcodes, 11% more likely to make charitable donations and 10% more likely to use location based services.

Highlighting regional trends, the report finds that mobile customers in the US, UK and China regularly use apps for checking balances and paying bills while in Africa Smart phones are used to send airtime to other users, transfer funds and seek credit. Also in Africa, a mobile money account is often an individual’s sole banking account.

The study shows that consumers are more likely to participate in e-commerce or mobile banking if their network is fast; 25% said they didn’t make mobile payments because the network was too slow, while 64% of individuals on 4G networks said they have made a mobile payment.

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