Followup: CNBC - Most Americans Don't Use Mobile Payments

This is a followup to our recent articles here and here that discuss how and why most people in the US have not moved towards new payment applications for paying normal daily expenses. CNBC runs this article which again points out that most people are simply happy with the debit and credit card system available to them. Below are some excerpts and then some added comments.

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"Despite growing smartphone dependence, most Americans still aren’t using the devices to pay for things."

. . . . .

"It seems odd considering the ubiquity of iPhones and Androids in the United States. More than 81% of Americans own a smartphone, up from 35% just eight years ago, according to Pew Research Center. While experts say mobile payments in the U.S. will eventually close the gap, they see legacy financial systems, a lack of a need for other options, and rewards cards as major headwinds."

. . . . .

"But in the U.S., the credit and debit card system is well-established and works just fine for most people.

“A big driver of mobile adoption is just how big an improvement is it,” du Toit said. “When it comes to the U.S., there is a good enough solution there already.”

. . . . . 

"U.S. consumers aren’t lacking options when it comes to paying on their phones. There’s Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, PayPal, Venmo, Square Cash, Zelle and newcomers looking to disrupt that entire list. But in order to use these apps, merchants such as coffee shops and retail stores need the proper hardware.

“It’s not the consumer mobile experience — they’ve done a pretty good job,” said Peter Gordon, CEO of PRMPayments. “It’s acceptance, meaning the merchant has to sign up for it. It’s expensive.”

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My added comments: Here again we have a mainstream publication article saying essentially the same thing we have said here on this topic. But really, this is just an example of why ALL change tends to take place gradually. Unless there is some kind of major problem/crisis that causes people to abandon what they have been doing, people tend to stay with what has been working for them. 

This may even offer another reason why the US dollar has become so entrenched globally as the reserve currency of choice. Once anything gets established as the standard, it tends to stay in that position for a long time unless something unusual comes along to disrupt the status quo.

So far, at least in the US, most people are still quite content to use debit and credit card for payments that are denominated in US dollars issued by the Federal Reserve. Here, we just continue to monitor events to see if anything will come along to change that.

Bloomberg - Americans Stick with Credit Cards

Over the last decade all kinds of new efforts to get people to change the way they pay for things have arisen. We have covered many of them here. But this article appearing in Bloomberg notes that, at least in the US, the use of plain old credit cards still wins out. Below are some excerpts and then an added comment.

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"Will anything ever pry old-fashioned credit cards out of Americans’ hands?

Even as the rest of the world embraces the idea of paying for stuff with their smartphones, the U.S. is clinging to its cash and plastic -- so much so that even the nation’s biggest bank is struggling to persuade people to switch. Starting early next year, JPMorgan Chase & Co. customers will no longer be able to use the Chase Pay app to pay with their smartphones when shopping in stores, the bank said Wednesday (8-21-19)."

. . . . 

"In the U.S., digital-wallet transactions represent only 5% of the $2.6 trillion market for in-person purchases and 20% online, while cards accounted for 80% of spending at physical stores and 70% online."

. . . . 

"The U.S. market has been slower to develop partly because merchants have been slow to accept such payments and consumers haven’t found new options convenient enough to give up paying with cards that offer lucrative rewards."

Please click here to read the full article in Bloomberg

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My added comment: The last paragraph quoted above makes a significant point in my view. It's why I use credit cards for most payments and why most everyone I know does as well. Other payment options simply are not competitive in offering sufficient rewards to get people to change engrained behavior (both merchants and end users). I talked about this a bit in this previous blog article that compared using credit cards to using Bitcoin or other similar kinds of payment options.