Smartphone wallets, apps ready to expand across APAC
ACI Worldwide, in conjunction with IDC Financial Insights, has released the findings from an Asia Pacific study on the current state of digital payment adoption and how new internet based services may affect payment trends across nine markets - Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and Thailand. The study draws on the views of 2,000 consumers to look into the use of digital payments, where payments currently stand and how they will evolve in the different markets. A key finding from Australia was a preference among retail financial consumers for alternative digital payment methods offering faster and more efficient transactions. Other specific findings for Australia included: Two-thirds (66.4 per cent) of survey respondents have used online payment services such as PayPal and Google Checkout to purchase goods or services online via a desktop, with the top reason being that the services are better trusted over alternative payments methods (38 per cent), followed by a view that these services are faster and more efficient (34.8 per cent); average usage of smartphone wallets remained relatively low compared to emerging economies in Asia Pacific, although 22 per cent of respondents said they would be "likely" or "very likely" to use smartphone wallets in the future; and almost two thirds (65 per cent) of Australian respondents were aware of shared economy services. Of this number, the most typical use cases were for taxi services (50 per cent), room sharing services (38 per cent) and meal sharing services (27 per cent). Some of the main findings across the whole region were: across the eight countries surveyed, 82 per cent of respondents had used new digital payments; the top reason consumers used online payment services was to enjoy "faster and more efficient payments" (47 per cent), followed by "trust in online payments" (21 per cent) and "better rates compared with other methods of payment" (15 per cent); non-bank led financial services, such as Alipay and WeChat Wallet, are disrupting emerging markets and challenging banks by becoming viable alternative payment methods, resulting in higher usage of online payment services (72 per cent), smartphone wallets (33 per cent) and mobile money (13 per cent); and digital methods of payments are set to grow in tandem with shared economy services in Asia Pacific. Examples of these transactions include taxi hire and car sharing services where ten per cent of respondents in the region are already paying for them with smartphone wallets."The region is rapidly moving towards real-time or immediate payments, driven by customers' demand for faster and more efficient payments," said Rachel Hunt, Marketing Director of Asia Pacific & Japan for ACI Worldwide. "Non-financial services have added to the dynamic competition, extending payments from online and mobile ecosystems into peer-to-peer payments within social apps such as Facebook and Twitter."