Adyen Report Shows Rapid Rise in U.S. M-Payments, Steady Increase Worldwide

It’s becoming a familiar refrain in the payments industry: Payments made using mobile devices, such as smart phones and tablets, continue to garner more and more traction.

The latest Mobile Payments Index from international payments company Adyen finds that such payments accounted for 27.2% of total global online payments made in the first quarter of 2015. That’s up from 20.2% in the same period a year ago. The index, published since 2013, measure mobile-payment activity for digital goods, such as memberships, hotel reservations, and tickets.

In the United States, payments made online using smart phones and tablets for digital goods accounted for 26.7%, an increase of almost five percentage points in the past six months, Adyen says.

The increase is attributed to continuing growth in consumer adoption of smart phones and tablets and the mainstreaming of mobile payments, says Roelant Prins, chief commercial officer of the Amsterdam-based company.

Mobile payments is moving beyond the early adopters and becoming more common among greater swaths of consumers, Prins tells Digital Transactions News. “There is still a big shift because quite a few people are getting used to actually buying something on their phones,” Prins says. Though long accustomed to buying apps and songs, consumers are getting more and more comfortable using ride services like Uber and Lyft, as well as mobile boarding passes, Prins says.

Adyen’s index also finds that the average transaction value made with tablets—$36.50—surpassed the smart phone average—$34.85—for the first time. While consumers may make higher-value purchases on tablets, they still make more purchases using smart phones.

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Smart phones netted 15.7% of online transactions, compared with 11.5% for tablets, a marked increase from the 10.9% and 9.3%, respectively, a year ago.

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Regardless of device type used, consumers may also be responding to smarter merchant decisions to develop for mobile first, Prins says. “A lot of mobile-first companies are selling retail products,” he says. That often results in a better understanding of the mobile checkout. “We are seeing more traditional retailers using mobile and optimizing for tablets.”