Consumers Quickly Embracing Mobile Apps for Purchases and Banking, Verizon Study Finds

While consumer acceptance of mobile wallets has been painfully slow for wallet developers such as Apple Inc., new survey results from the nation’s largest mobile carrier show consumers are quite willing to use mobile apps in some form to buy things. Some 23% of smart-phone owners last year used an app for the first time to make a purchase, according to a survey conducted for Verizon Wireless.

An equal percentage of respondents used a mobile app for the first time to make a bank transaction, up 70% from 2014. Other first-time notables include 12% of respondents who used an app to order a taxi or car ride, 11% to make a restaurant reservation, and 8% to book airfares.

In all, 56% of smart-phone owners have now used a mobile app to purchase a product and 55% to perform a bank transaction, according to Verizon. Twenty-six percent have used an app to book restaurant reservations, and 22% each have booked airfares or ordered rides through apps.

The survey did not ask about the types of apps consumers used to make their purchases, such as a retailer-specific app versus a mobile wallet or a general-purpose app such as PayPal, according to a Verizon spokesperson.

The fastest-growing category was ordering a taxi or car ride, up 124% from 10% of respondents in 2014. Restaurant reservations grew 72% and airline bookings 54%.

Verizon’s findings reinforce data from other surveys indicating that so-called Millennials, here defined as young adults ages 18 to 34, lead the demographic pack in mobile payments. For example, 70% of Millennial smart-phone owners bought something last year using a mobile app, up 85% from 2014. In comparison, 66% of smart-phone owners in the next-youngest group, GenXers, and 39% of the aging Baby Boomers, bought something with a mobile app in 2015.

Mobile banking wasn’t much different: 67% of Millennials performed a banking transaction on their phones last year compared with 62% of GenXers and 43% of Baby Boomers. And 36% of Millennials ordered a taxi or car ride through a smart-phone app compared with 23% of GenXers and only 8% of Baby Boomers.

The online survey was conducted Jan. 4-6 for Verizon Wireless by KRC Research. KRC polled a sample of 1,017 adults drawn from a larger research pool of consumers who opted-in to participate.

Verizon Wireless is a unit of New York City-based Verizon Communications Inc. and has 110.8 million retail subscribers, according to the spokesperson.