The share of payment transactions taking place on a smartphone or tablet grew to 19.5% in December 2013, rising from 17.5% in August, and up 55% year-over-year from 12.6% the prior December, says Adyen in its latest Global Mobile Payments Index. Mobile payments comprise an even greater share in the travel industry, where they represent 29.4% of global transactions, with the retail vertical (23%) also seeing above-average share.
Among the 5 verticals analyzed by Adyen, the gaming sector had the lowest share of mobile payments – at 12% – but it sported the fastest increase, of 35% since August.
The retail sector, meanwhile, is unique in being the only of the five where the volume of tablet payments exceeded the volume of smartphone payments in December. Not only did that buck the trend, but the disparity was significant, with the volume of transactions on tablets outpacing those on smartphones by more than a 2 to 1 margin (15.9% vs. 7.1%).
Tablets also recorded a higher average transaction value in the retail space ($122) than PCs ($92) and smartphones ($90), the only sector in which they distanced themselves from smartphones and PCs.
Overall, Adyen says that the iPad accounted for a leading 41% of total mobile transactions during the fourth quarter, with the iPhone (31.6%) next. Following in mobile transaction share were Android smartphones (20%), Android tablets (6.6%), and Windows mobile devices (0.6%). In December, the iPhone had 60% share of smartphone transactions compared to Android’s 38.6%, with that gap having narrowed from a 31.5-point separation in April.
The Adyen data is the latest to show the significant inroads being made by mobile devices across a variety of industries. For example, recent data indicates that:
- Almost 1 in 3 Google organic search visits are now mobile;
- Some 65% of B2C marketing email opens occur on a mobile device; and
- A majority of time spent social networking occurs on a mobile device – with that threshold crossed somewhere in late 2012.
Is it any wonder that marketers consider consumers’ increasing use of mobile devices to have the biggest influence on their digital marketing programs?
About the Data: The Adyen Global Mobile Payments Index is based on Adyen global payment transaction data. Adyen processes payments for more than 3,500 medium, large and enterprise-sized organizations mainly operating multi-national businesses. The company processed more than USD 14 billion in payments transactions in 2013, of which USD 2.2 billion were mobile transactions.
