Mobile payment methods will replace cash and cards in UK by 2020, according to research by Visa Europe.
The study, which was concluded upon the participation of 12,015 European consumers, predicted that the UK markets will stem a whopping £1.2 billion/week, with six in ten Britons expecting to use their mobile device for making payments by the aforementioned year. At present, only one in 12 people use mobile payment methods.
“The UK mobile payments boom will see an upsurge in the weekly value spent using mobile devices, with the market growing to an estimated £1.2 billion per week by 2020,” Visa predicted. “The average shopper expects to spend £27 on mobile each week by 2020, £10 more than is spent today. In fact, nearly a quarter of respondents (24%) predict they will spend more than £50 a week using their mobile device by 2020.”
A part of the study is also derived from the current attitude of customers towards using mobile payment methods. Apart from buying products like mobile applications and music, the users were found to be purchasing slightly expensive items, such as electronics and clothing, using the local m-commerce options. As of now, 43% of the respondents think they would use contactless payment methods, while 47% among them say that they would use smartphones to indulge in everyday shopping.
Visa Europe’s executive director Jeremy Nicholds however raised the necessity to further educate people about cashless technologies, saying that it will create an overall impact in raising the adoption of such methods. “We’ve seen this with contactless card adoption – once people learn about the technology, see others using it and get used to paying with it, usage soars,” he told Digital Money Times.
