Adoption of mobile payments triples across Europe

Default Image

The proportion of people in Europe who regularly use a mobile device to make everyday payments has tripped, according to Visa’s ‘2016 Digital Payments Study‘. More than half (54%) of consumers now use a mobile to pay for a variety of activities, up from 18% last year.

Just 12% of respondents said they have never used a mobile to make a payment and have no plans to do so, down from 38% in 2015.

The online survey of 36,000 consumers across 19 European countries found that mobile payment uptake is just as strong in developing markets, such as Turkey, as it is in tech-savvy markets, according to the results of an online poll of almost 37,000 consumers in 19 European countries. Uptake is strong in both developing markets, such as Turkey, where mobile has leapfrogged traditional payment methods, and in tech-savvy markets, such as Scandanavia.

In fact, Turkey has the highest proportion of mobile payment adopters (91%), followed by Denmark (89%), Norway and Israel (87%), Sweden (86%), Poland and Romania (79%), Ireland (78%), Finland (77%) and Belgium with 75%.

In the UK, where 74% of those surveyed make mobile purchases, nearly 6 in 10 use a mobile device to transfer money to friends and family (59%) and just under half for takeaway food (45%). Forty-three percent even buy high value items such as holidays and electronics on a mobile device.

“This data is a confirmation that the future of digital payments has arrived, with consumers across the length and breadth of the UK and Europe embracing a variety of new ways to pay,” said Kevin Jenkins, Visa’s UK & Ireland Managing Director.

“Visa sees smartphones and wearables as the beginning of a broader trend, with millions of new connected devices making it simple, safe and secure to integrate daily commerce transactions into almost any technology.”

Share:
Share

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kristina Knight-1
Kristina Knight, Journalist , BA
Content Writer & Editor
linkedin
Kristina Knight is a freelance writer with more than 15 years of experience writing on varied topics. Kristina’s focus for the past 10 years has been the small business, online marketing, and banking sectors, however, she keeps things interesting by writing about her experiences as an adoptive mom, parenting, and education issues. Kristina’s work has appeared with BizReport.com, NBC News, Soaps.com, DisasterNewsNetwork, and many more publications.