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More younger consumers than older ones prefer using debit cards for online shopping, finds the “Holiday Shopping Consumer Survey Results” released by Vantiv Inc.
In the survey of more than 1,000 consumers, 32% of Millennials and 27% of Generation X said using a debit card was their preferred online-shopping method. In comparison, only 18% of Baby Boomers and 12% of retirees made that same choice. Overall, regardless of age, only 23% choose a debit card over the 50% who opt for a credit card for their e-commerce transactions.
Zero-liability policies from the card brands are thought to influence consumer behavior with credit cards, especially for e-commerce payments. Such policies guarantee the consumer won’t be held liable for unauthorized charges made with their credit or debit card account or account information.
Meanwhile, preference for alternative online payment methods is fairly uniform across the generations. Overall, 17% of consumers choose to use a PayPal account. By generation, 19% of Millennials, 15% of Gen Xers, 19% of Boomers, and 14% of retirees prefer PayPal.
Credit and debit cards, however, fall in the middle of the pack when consumers rank the perceived safety of payment methods. The safest are perceived to be prepaid store cards. Overall, 76% said they were either mostly safe or extremely safe, followed by PayPal at 69%; credit cards, 65%; reloadable prepaid cards, 63%; debit cards, 54%; and Apple Pay/mobile wallets, 39%.
Other research appears to back up this perception. Thirty-two percent of consumers in an Auriemma Consulting Group report said security concerns kept them from making a mobile payment, with 21% believing the payment method was unsafe.
The survey also asked about holiday shopping plans. Overall, 47% intend to shop for holiday gifts in a store and 43% will shop online. Only 8% plan to shop via mail order/telephone order, with 3% shopping some other way.
Younger consumers intend to shop more online or using a mobile app than do older individuals. Fifty-one percent of Millennials and 47% of Gen Xers will shop via this channel, compared with 37% of Boomers and 34% of retirees.
More older consumers—51% of Boomers and 50% of retirees—will shop in stores. Forty-two percent of Millennials and 45% of Gen Xers will shop in a store.
