As the world shifts to mobile, the latest Index reveals a surge in mobile payment share of online transactions, marking the first time mobile payments have accounted for more than a quarter of global online payments since Adyen started publishing the Mobile Payments Index in June 2013.
In Q4 2014, 25.8% of global online transactions took place on a mobile device, which is 11% higher than Q3 2014 (23.3%), and 37% higher than Q4 2013 (18.8%). December 2014 showed the highest proportion of mobile payments at 26.6%, followed closely by November at 26.1%. This end-of-year spike suggests that shoppers are more likely to make purchases on mobile as the global peak shopping period hits in November (Single’s Day in China, Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the US and globally), and December (the Christmas shopping period).
The Mobile Payments Index also reveals that in the battle of the brands, the iPad maintained a slight lead at 34% of mobile transactions, with the iPhone at 32.3%, and Android phones at 25.3%. This is dramatically different from one year earlier in Q4 2013, when more than 40% of mobile transactions were on iPad, compared to 32% on iPhone, and just 20% on Android phones. If the current trends persist, Android may surpass the iPhone and iPad in the latter half of 2015 and the iPad is likely to lose its lead over the iPhone in the near future, the report suggests.
According to the findings, smartphones continued to pull away from tablets as the preferred mobile device, with 58% of mobile transactions made on smartphones and 42% on tablets. This continues the trend from previous quarters – in Q4 2013, the split was approximately 53% on smartphone versus 47% on tablet. This surge correlates with a global trend toward larger screens on smartphones. However, as the research points out, tablet transaction volume is still growing overall, with 10.8% of global online transactions in Q4 on tablet compared to 10% in Q3.
Similar to findings from previous Mobile Payments Indexes, smartphone transactions accounted for about 20% of all online transaction for digital goods (including games, services like club memberships, hotel reservations, and tickets) and tablet transactions accounted for just 7%. Retail goods (such as clothing, furniture, appliances, groceries) are reversed, with smartphones accounting for less than 10% of retail purchases and tablets accounting for 19% of purchases. This indicates shoppers still prefer to buy physical products on tablets, but gravitate to smartphones for online services, the report concludes.
Since June 2013, the Adyen Mobile Payment Index has tracked the evolution of mobile as a payment channel, providing insight into mobile payment trends for different devices, market sectors and geographies. The Mobile Payments Index is based on Adyen’s global mobile web payment transaction data and does not track in-app mobile payments.
Adyen is a payments technology company that provides businesses with a single global platform to accept payments anywhere in the world. Adyen enables businesses to process payments across online, mobile and Point-of-Sale (POS) with over 250 payment methods and 187 transaction currencies.
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