Mobile payment user demographics: Myth vs Fact
We recently conducted a consumer survey to better understand our customers’ customers. As marketers, the downside to having a frictionless end user payment experience is that we don’t always know a lot about the people making the payments. How old are you? Why did you select the “Pay by mobile” option? Do you even have a bank account? These are the kinds of questions our survey was designed to answer.
Here’s what we learned, in classic “Myth vs Fact” format:
Myth – Mobile payment users are just a bunch of 12 year olds using their parent’s cell phones to make payments.
Fact – Over 88% of mobile payment users are 18 or older. The distribution skews younger with about 60% between 18 and 30 years old.
Myth – Mobile payment users only use mobile because they don’t have bank accounts or credit cards.
Fact - 76% of mobile payment users have a bank account or credit card.
Mobile payment users have plenty of options, which begs the question, “why do you use your mobile phone to pay?”
We’re glad we asked:
34% said they used mobile because “it’s fast and easy”
22% said because “it’s fun”
20% said because “i know it will work”
14% said because “it doesn’t seem like I’m spending real money”
10% said because “i don’t have a bank account or credit card”
Folks, mobile payments are becoming mainstream.
Good stuff.
If 76% of mobile payment users have a bank account, this means 24% of them don’t, right?
Then how come 10% of them said because “I don’t have a bank account or credit card”
Guys, where do you get end-user data? Ok you have phone numbers but how do you get that data you present here?
@Michael, Hi. We surveyed 500 US consumers who had recently purchased virtual goods or virtual currency either on a social network, online game or virtual world.
@sriram
The short answer is that with surveys you often have segments of respondents that are not mutually exclusive. In this particular case, the question of “why do you prefer paying with your mobile phone?” was only asked to those respondents who said that mobile payment was their preferred payment option. Therefore, the respondents who said they preferred using mobile payment because “they didn’t have a bank or credit card account” were a subset of a larger population of respondents of whom 24% said they didn’t have a bank or credit card account. Make sense?
thanks for the clarification Hill.
Hi, nice posts there
thank’s for the interesting information
I share the same views. Liked your blog very much.
Mobile payment accounts for 76% of mobile users, while “I do not have bank account or credit card” accounts for mobile users to use mobile payment of 10%. It’s that simple.
Hi, very interesting post. Thanks for share.
Interesting breakdown, I imagined that mobile payments were for younger users (they all have cell’s but not a visa). It’s definitely becoming more mainstream though, I actually feel more secure paying by cell over the internet rather than by credit card.
Nice facts and figures… But its a facility which could be useful if we takes it in concept of mobility.
Wow