Mobile Payment Buy-In Lags in Australia

Smartphone owners in Australia are in no rush to make mobile payments, according to research from Visa and RFi.

A February poll of smartphone owners in the country found that just 8% had made a mobile payment before. And three in 10 didn’t even know what they were.

Respondents were generally big fans of contactless payments?with a credit or debit card. More than six in 10 cardholders surveyed had made contactless payments before, and 63% of that group used their cards for contactless payments at least once a week.

The willingness to go contactless may help mobile payments take off after a slow start. Visa and RFi asked respondents whether they could imagine their mobile phone becoming their primary mechanism for making payments. Most could not. But among those who had used their card for contactless payments, 20% could, as opposed to 12% of those who knew about contactless card payments but hadn’t made one.