Deloitte: Ignorance Isn’t Bliss. It’s Killing Mobile Payments

On Wednesday (Dec. 9), Deloitte released a major mobile report and concluded that mobile payments is suffering from a payments industry self-inflicted wound: an almost criminal lack of shopper and store associate education about mobile payments.

This is one of those good news/bad news situations. The good news is if the payments industry leaders act smart, this problem can not only be solved, but reversed. Consumer and store employee education will sharply boost mobile payments usage—and that will on top of a continual influx of new mobile shoppers as more people upgrade to NFC-friendly smartphones. The bad news is—when was the last time you saw a lot of payments industry leaders acting smart?

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Samsung Pay’s Encryption Perception Problem

It seems a funny thing has happened on the way to using Samsung Pay for some users, as the emerging mobile payments platform isn’t compatible with a phone’s encryption protocol. Simply stated: if the phone is switched into encrypted mode (as many who use their phones for work are required to do), users can’t add cards to their Samsung Pay wallet.

This isn’t going over well. Although it’s not yet clear if this encryption conniption is a glitch or intentional, either way it is sending a positively terrible message to users about Samsung Pay and security. Not requiring a user to activate phone encryption is one thing, but refusing new payment credentials if it’s already been activated is very different.

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Apple Pay Penetration Stats: The Less We Know, The Better It Is

Although there is no question today that mobile payments are increasing, to what degree is challenging. This confusion was magnified this month when Bloomberg quoted the Aite Group as saying that ApplePay accounts for one percent of all U.S. retail transactions.

Aite denies ever having said that—the analyst said that he said that it was much lower than one percent—and indeed Aite says that Apple Pay represents a tiny fraction of one percent of current U.S. retail sales. IDC estimates that Apple Pay today accounts for about one-tenth of one percent of all retail in-store transactions in the U.S., while Javelin puts that figure at about half—roughly one-twentieth of one percent. When moving from Apple Pay to Google Pay, the estimated slices get even thinner. Crone Consulting president Richard Crone sees Google Pay representing about one-third of Apple Pay transactions. IDC analyst James Wester put Google Pay’s figures in an even more vague area: “Google Pay is so small to be incalculable. I can’t even estimate what it is because it is so small,” he said.

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