Tue, 02/05/2013 – 08:23 by Online measurement firm comScore
released data from a new survey about digital wallet awareness and acceptance among US consumers. The survey was conducted in November 2012. It underscores familiar themes in the existing coversation about digital wallets: most consumers are largely unaware of the offerings, but those that are have security concerns.
In the context of this research “digital wallet” means online and mobile. To that end, the survey data showed that PayPal and Google Wallet were the only two payments products that enjoyed meaningful consumer awareness. In terms of usage, only PayPal has seen any real adoption — largely because of its long established online history.
Echoing many other surveys the comScore data found that security was a concern for many users. Like almost every one before it, the study concludes that consumers need to be educated about the overall benefits of digital wallets and the features that make them more secure than conventional credit card payments.
In a Q3 2012 survey we found very limited interest in mobile payments.
How interested are you in using your mobile phone to pay for things, and replace cash or your credit cards? 
Source: (August, 2012; n=1,501 US adults) From a demographic standpoint, people under 45 were considerably more interested in mobile payments than people who were older. Similarly, a recent
survey (n=1,155 US adults) by the Raddon Financial Group found that that younger adults (Gen Y) are most likely to be interested and most likely to see value in mobile wallets.
Source: Raddon Financial Group (2012) A recent survey from Harris Interactive is more bullish on the outlook for mobile payments than was ours:
“How interested are you in being able to use your smartphone to process in-person payments via tapping a special receiver, rather than using cash or payment cards?” - Very interested in using my smartphone instead of cash or cards: 8%
- Somewhat interested in using my smartphone instead of cash or cards: 19%
- Not very interested in using my smartphone instead of cash or cards: 12%
- Not at all interested in using my smartphone instead of cash or cards: 43%
This was the full mobile-user population. The following were the smartphone-only responses:
- Very interested in using my smartphone instead of cash or cards: 16%
- Somewhat interested in using my smartphone instead of cash or cards: 28%
- Not very interested in using my smartphone instead of cash or cards: 16%
- Not at all interested in using my smartphone instead of cash or cards: 30%
While the benefits of “horizontal” wallets and mobile payments solutions (e.g., Google Wallet) are often unknown or ambiguous to consumers, what will drive (and is now driving) mobile payments adoption are “point solutions” that are highly specific. In these scenarios the benefits are concrete and self evident:
