SAP survey: Mobile payments need to be targeted at retail

New York -- More than half (53%) of industry leaders believe that improving customers’ retail experience is essential to creating a successful mobile payments scheme, according to a recent survey by SAP.



The study, SAP’s third consecutive GSMA Mobile World Congress survey, found that the “secret sauce” for creating a better retail experience includes POS services such as near-field communication (28%), facilitating universal acceptance of mobile payments (25%) and location-based point-of-sale offerings (24%).



Other services included targeted offers based on consumer preferences and shopping history (12%) and integration with mass transit (9%).



“We are seeing a maturing of the mobile payments market, as we move from a service that is driven by person-to-person payments to one that must tackle the challenges of the retail environment,” said Diarmuid Mallon, lead, global mobile marketing programs, SAP. “It is clear from our survey that in addition to improving the payment experience, mobile wallet apps need to support a multitude of services such as loyalty and couponing.”



In other results, 34% of the respondents felt that applications such as Apple Passbook will speed up brands offering wallet services. In regard to changes in the mobile wallet, only 28% of mobile insiders expected new ticketing and coupon services, such as Apple Passbook, Google Now and the Samsung wallet app, could become an alternative to true mobile wallets. And 38% believed that the lack of consumer awareness and too much confusion around the offerings were holding back mobile wallet services.



The anticipated leaders of future successful mobile payments offerings included banks (29%); online payment schemes, such as PayPal, Apple iTunes or Amazon Payments (28%); credit cards (26%) or a consortium of operators (26%).



The SAP survey was conducted on-site at the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona, Spain.