Poll: Most People With Digital Wallets Don’t Bother To Use Them

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(Sergio Uceda)

Many of our readers have smartphones, and you could be reading this post on a smartphone right now. While they make fine Consumerist-reading devices, we keep hearing that smartphones will become out method of choice to make in-person payments, and we won’t have to carry physical wallets around. However, while Google and Apple would love for everyone to use their respective digital wallet products, consumers simply aren’t interested yet.

A recent Gallup poll shows that there aren’t many of us walking around with potential digital wallets in our pockets to begin with. Only 13% of adults with smartphones have one that offers a digital wallet app at all. Out of that minority of smartphone users, only a fraction of people have their digital wallets set up and use them at every opportunity: 11% of young adults report doing so, and 11% of men of all ages do too.

The majority of people who own smartphones equipped with a wallet app use it rarely or have never even set it up. That makes them part of the majority of people polled who said that they don’t expect to begin using a digital wallet in the next year, even if they are equipped for it.

Why don’t people want to use digital wallets, anyway? Out of the people who said they have no plans to use one in the next year, whether they have a capable phone already or not, most (55%) said that the systems seem insecure. 21% of people say that they don’t know enough about them, and 14% say they don’t see any advantages to using a mobile wallet.

No One Is Winning the Battle for Digital Wallet Customers [Gallup]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist