With a global shift away from paper cash, physical loyalty cards, and checks towards digital payments and contactless transactions, more than 68% of consumers now use mobile payment apps for their everyday purchases.
Mobile wallets have digitized payments, loyalty cards, coupons, public transport, tickets, airline passes, and car keys.
The University of Illinois published a study in 2020, which found that there had been a 54% increase in the number of consumers using mobile wallets while shopping in brick-and-mortar stores compared to 2019. Interestingly, transaction size increased by 2.4% and purchase frequency by more than 23%.
But you may be asking what’s contributed to this supersonic growth and adoption?
Here are a few contributing factors that have played a role:
Hygiene: With the advent of COVID-19, consumers are more conscious of cleanliness than ever before. Contactless payments provide an easy way to avoid having hundreds (if not thousands) of people touching the same surfaces, like the touchpad of a credit card terminal.
Security: Mobile wallets offer better protection against fraud because customers must unlock their smartphones before wirelessly connecting to a POS reader. They also use biometric authentication to secure fingerprint or facial recognition payments. Biometric technology is more secure because it checks something that cannot be changed or passed on, like a pin code or password. Additionally, the wallet cannot be accessed without getting past lock screens and biometric checks if the phone is stolen. Mobile wallets don’t store credit card numbers on the device. Instead, each transaction is “tokenized” using cryptography which verifies payments without sharing sensitive information.
Speed: Transaction processing times are up to ten times faster on mobile devices than with credit cards. The mobile wallet and POS terminal are connected to the internet, which means data can be transmitted much faster than the traditional one-way data transfer.
Convenience: It’s easy to leave home without your wallet accidentally, but it’s much harder to leave your mobile phone at home since we’ve come to rely on them more and more. Also, mobile wallets remove the need to remember different pin codes or how many points are stored on each loyalty card, as all of this information is retained within the mobile wallet.
Mobile wallets have snowballed in popularity, with most shoppers carrying a smartphone with them at all times, making it a more accessible form of payment rather than cash or credit cards. Looking further into the future and at countries that already have widespread adoption of mobile wallets, it’s possible to conceive that almost all transactions will be digital within a few years.
Mobeo’s mobile wallet platform seamlessly supports both Apple Wallet and Google Pay. If you’re ready to explore how mobile wallets could boost sales for your business, speak to us today.
Mobile wallet marketing is an effective way for brands to engage customers without installing any other apps or opt-in for notifications. To do this, the brand creates digital loyalty cards or coupons that customers can access and use on their mobile devices.
Mobile wallets present businesses with a new channel to communicate with their customers and improve brand loyalty. Urban Airship, one of the most powerful platforms in the world, reported that “Mobile wallets are now among the top four ways consumers prefer to stay updated on sales, offers, and coupons, alongside decades-old channels including websites, email and text/SMS.”
However, it is still early days. Given that this is a very new marketing strategy, an average of 19% of consumers report noticing retailers implementing offers and loyalty programs in their mobile wallets, but this percentage is expected to skyrocket.
So, you might be asking yourself, “what does mobile marketing involve?” and we’re here to answer that question:
1. Coupons
This allows businesses to create various promotions or coupons and send them directly to a customer’s mobile wallet to give them a nudge or encourage them to purchase from your store or location the next time they’re looking to make a purchase. Once the coupon is added to the customer’s wallet, the business can share updates about it through notifications.
2. Location-based
Mobile wallet marketing allows businesses to send notifications and coupons to customers based on their location. This is done via hyperlocal ad campaigns or sometimes even geo-fencing campaigns. When the customer enters the vicinity of the business, the wallet sends a notification to the customer’s phone with a coupon, and clicking this notification redirects straight to the mobile wallet.
3. Cashback
Cashback offers have become increasingly popular over the past couple of years. This is attractive to customers because they receive a rebate of the retail price when they purchase using their mobile wallets. In addition, this is a great way to incentivize repeat purchases and brand loyalty.
4. Notifications
Mobile wallets provide businesses with numerous notifications that they can schedule according to time, date, frequency, and other triggers like the customer’s purchase behavior. For example, notifications can be sent in a push notification, SMS, or in app-message. A lot of the time, the customer can manage the types of messages they wish to receive in the settings section, which helps ensure that they get to digest information in the way they choose to.
Now that you know how mobile wallet marketing works on a practical level, some of the benefits include:
Mobile-only experience: No need for printing or clipping coupons. Keeping the coupon digital and stored on the mobile device ensures it’s always accessible to the customer.
Right time and place: Because mobile wallet marketing can be geo-targeted, you can send reminder notifications about the coupons they have available when they’re within a set radius from that store. Research indicates that up to 63% of customers are likely to enter a store if they receive coupon expiration reminders when they’re nearby.
Real-time offer updates: Due to mobile wallet marketing being an entirely digital customer experience, businesses have the power to update promotions and offers in real-time by simply pushing updated offers straight to the customer’s wallet.
Personalization: Thanks to the highly detailed customer analytics with mobile wallet marketing, coupons can be targeted and personalized based on triggers such as previous products they’ve purchased, timestamps for when previous purchases were made, and more. This ensures that you’re delivered promotional offers for products that you know the customer already likes.
With more and more people using their mobile wallets, it creates a win-win between businesses and consumers. It gives customers access to the best deals while driving brand loyalty and repeat purchases.
Mobeo offers the ability for businesses to create scalable, personalized digital coupons that are seamlessly added to shoppers’ wallets, allowing for online-to-offline conversions, driving traffic in-store.
Talk to us today about how we can help boost your digital footprint.
