Who Will Dominate Mobile Payments? [INFOGRAPHIC]

With Google Trends, it seems like the world might’ve finally found a (fairly) reliable way to know what people are thinking. As the most-used search engine on the web, it has a lot of insights to offer about what’s trending in relation to everything from stock price movements to the spread of diseases to presidential election winners. (It also seems to be a commonly referenced source for pick-up lines, in case you’re interested!)

We wanted to see if its powers could also be used for the good of eCommerce—specifically, which mobile payment app is likely to be most in-demand by consumers?

Hopefully mobile payments are already on your radar: The latest figures show strong growth of mobile payment activity around the world in 2017, and it’s expected to continue climbing in the years ahead. What’s driving this payment trend? Primarily the simplicity and speed mobile payment apps bring to the checkout process, which is good for both consumers (who check out faster) and eCommerce companies (who receive payments faster). Mobile payments are also growing rapidly in some countries, like India, thanks to supportive government policies. So if you’re not already offering digital wallets as a payment option, you could be limiting your revenue by not giving customers what they want.

So which mobile wallet(s) will a majority of consumers prefer in the near future? For the answer to that question, check out our latest infographic below, Who Will Dominate Mobile Payments? Click To Tweet

So which mobile wallet(s) will a majority of consumers prefer in the near future? For the answer to that question, check out our latest infographic below, Who Will Dominate Mobile Payments? We found a clear winner thanks to Google’s trusty trend-detector—along with using a few other criteria we think are important for attaining winner status. But keep this in mind: While the results are interesting, having just a single digital wallet isn’t a successful global sales strategy. Why? Continue reading below to find out.

Click here to view the entire infographic.

Our research revealed a lot of interest in different eWallets.

• China has two primary payment methods: Alipay and WeChat. Alipay has in the neighborhood of 500 million monthly active users, and the messaging app WeChat has around 1 billion. Cashless payments are already the norm for many Chinese consumers, particularly the under-35 crowd. (Alipay says it processed 256,000 payment transactions per second on “Singles Day” in November 2018!) If you’re hoping to sell into this market, either Alipay or WeChat (or both!) are necessities.
• Out of the three final contenders—Google Pay, Samsung Pay, and Apple Pay—each clearly had different strengths according to the stats we found. And all this data should be looked at in context. For example, Apple Pay has the most users, but Samsung Pay has excellent reviews, and Google Pay entered the market most recently.
• Finally, while the Starbucks mobile payment app is exclusive to Starbucks, it’s worth mentioning that this app has more users—23 million plus—than Google Pay, Apple Pay, and Samsung Pay, and is expected to hold that lead through 2022. There’s a lot the payments industry can learn from this app, particularly surrounding its strategy of combining payments with loyalty program features, and including perks like mobile ordering.

While the winning eWallet will certainly be a strong addition to your payment methods, it’s also important to take a variety of factors into account when you’re choosing which eWallet(s) to offer. By considering how your customers, in particular are buying (laptops or smartphones), which markets you’re trying to reach, and what browser your shoppers are using, you’ll be able to predict a sure winner for your own business—giving your customers the payment options they want most.