U.S. Consumers Not Convinced they Need Mobile Payments

A new survey finds that most U.S. consumers are not eagerly awaiting mobile payments. Lightspeed Research surveyed 10,000 credit card customers, including some 2,400 smartphone users, and found that half of those with smartphones described the ability to make mobile payments as "very unimportant" to them. Americans greet mobile payments with a yawn


Only 15 percent of those surveyed said mobile payment was very or somewhat important. The findings should come as no surprise. The payments process is not broken. Cash, check, credit and debit card payments are well understood, reliable, safe and easy to use.

On the other hand, there appear to be brighter prospects for new types of credit cards co-branded with daily deal sites. The Lightspeed research reveals that more than one quarter (27 percent) of Living Social customers would be interested in a Living Social-branded credit card, while more than one third (34 percent) of Groupon customers would be interested in a Groupon-branded card. 

Further, the research determined that daily deal customers’ creditworthiness and overall spending behaviors make them an attractive target from a credit product standpoint. Relative to the overall U.S. credit cardholder population, Groupon and Living Social customers are lucrative. Life for credit card

Users of the two leading daily deal services are about 50 percent more likely to have household incomes above $75,000, have higher credit scores, make three times as many credit card purchases and are about twice as likely to pay their monthly credit card balances in full.