Study Shows Mobile Payments Popular for Innovation, Convenience, Speed

Mastercard, in partnership with Prime Research, just its Mobile Payments Social Media Study tracking 85,000 related social media comments across Twitter, Facebook, Online Blogs and Forums from around the world. Two prominent themes emerged from the research:

1. A high volume of conversation and consumer interest in adopting mobile payments, and
2. Confusion over the array of options available today as barriers to entry.

About the Mastercard/PRIME Study

The study looked at social commentary over a six-month period and analyzed consumer conversations around mobile payments to assess people’s willingness to adopt mobile payment services. Conducted across 43 markets in North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and the Pacific Rim,  the research firm identified 85,000 relevant social media posts over the past six months on the subject of mobile payment innovation in the context of MasterCard and its industry peers. Within the 85,000 comments, 10,000 of the most insightful were subjected to PRIME Research’s more granular expert human-content analysis.

The analysis across 43 markets and in 26 languages shows:

• Early Adopter sentiment is mixed in tone (58% positive/factual), while those yet to adopt are more positive overall (76% positive/factual).  Most posts praised aspects including innovation, convenience and speed.
• Europeans have concerns mobile payment security and general reservations about the feasibility of worldwide adoption.
• Across the Latin America and Caribbean regions, non-adopters express a need for clarification on the mobile payment technologies offered and their costs.
• American users show similar uncertainty in the compatibility of mobile payments with other payment systems.

Why the Confusion?

I like to refer to part of an illustration by MobilePaymentsToday.

There’s a whole lot to consider. What payments are available where? On what platforms? And how they tie into traditional payment systems?

The marketer’s job will be to clarify this for the global consumer. Do that, and according to this study, the market is eager to evolve.