There can be no doubt that consumers are embracing mobile shopping with some degree of alacrity – it accounts now for at least 20% of e-commerce sales at the last count, and that is sure to rise this Christmas – however, it could be a lot bigger. The trouble is that many more people are using mobile to shop that the statistics around ‘purchase’ would suggest. According to a study by Jumio, two thirds of consumers who do actually attempt to buy through mobile abandon their shopping carts at checkout.
Now, this used to be a real problem for online retailers – and to some extent still is – but it seems to be really hampering mobile. The biggest cause seems to be that consumers just lose their bottle at the last minute. Many others fear for the security around what they are poised to do and many more shy away – quite rightly – from entering payment details, addresses and all the other paraphernalia of trying to do an online transaction for the first time.
The problem could be widely solved by improving how payments over mobile work and it chimes nicely with our lead story this week which looks in depth – through a lovely exclusive video interview and a thought provoking news story – at the role mobile payments actually plays in how it is, in many ways, the real key to every facet of mobile commerce.
According to Alastair Lukies of Monitise, payments are not only the way to use mobile to glue together the multichannel experience, they are also the key way for retailers to engage consumers and perfect their targeted marketing. As he reveals in the video interview and accompanying story, if retailers, banks and network operators look at how to co-operate around mobile payments, then they can start to shift away from having to reply on Google et al to get them in front on consumers, as well as perhaps nix the idea that some third party has to run mobile wallets and leave the retailers out in the cold.
Lukies comments are prescient. There is – as we have discussed here many times this year – a battle raging as to who owns the customer when it comes to payments, with retailers, banks, network operators and the likes of Google and many other third party payment providers all lining up to take their cut.
But it needn’t – and shouldn’t – be like this. And with enough thought-leadership from people like Lukies who are looking to propagate a fair and better way of offering mobile payments (and the marketing, engagement and sales that go with it) then we are likely to see some interesting developments in the coming months.
