What you need to know
- We asked our readers if they used mobile payments from their smartphones or smartwatches.
- Out of more than 2,000 votes, over 70% of our readers say they primarily use mobile payments.
- The remaining 29% prefer physical wallets, but roughly half still use mobile payments.
Over the weekend, we asked our readers if they use mobile payments. Systems like Google Wallet, Samsung Wallet, and others continue to improve the ways that users can quickly make payments, access loyalty cards, or use transit passes. And it seems like the effort is paying off.
Out of more than 2,000 votes, over 70% of our readers say they primarily use mobile payments. Meanwhile, of the remaining 29% of voters prefer to use their physical wallets, with more than half of those opting to use mobile payments every so often.
Reese on Twitter says using systems like Google Pay is much more convenient for transit:
"All the time - especially when paying for buses and trains here in London. So much easier to quickly whip out GPay when rushing through a busy station than it is to fiddle with your wallet trying to find a physical card."
Susan Hugus on Facebook notes how they use the Galaxy Watch 4 for payments, especially with more places starting to support it:
"It's working very well in Denmark. Never pulling out the wallet to pay. NYC restaurants are slowly getting with the mobile payment system. I use my watch 4 all the time in stores in the US."
Another reader, ArKa, points out that a lack of support is still a problem in many places.
"I always use it when I can but for some reason there's no federal mandates for physical storefronts to accept all forms of NFC payments."
Many others echoed this sentiment, with large companies like Walmart curiously lacking support for mobile payments. There are also many countries that still lack support for some mobile payment systems. Google continues to expand support for Google Wallet on the best Android phones, recently adding six new countries to its list. However, there's still plenty of work to be done to make mobile payments ubiquitous.
