SAP survey at Mobile World Congress 2013 highlights need for mobile wallets and services targeted at

Monday, 11 March 2013 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

SAP AG last week announced the findings of its third consecutive GSMA Mobile World Congress survey, which found that 53% of industry leaders believed that improving customers’ retail experience would be essential to creating a successful mobile payments scheme.

The survey is aimed at addressing top issues facing mobile commerce service providers and reflects the sentiments of mobile operators, fixed telecommunication providers, over-the-top (OTT) players and other global mobile industry executives.

Survey results revealed that the “secret sauce” for creating a better retail experience includes location-based point-of-sale offerings (24%), point-of-sale services such as near field communication (NFC) (28%) and facilitating universal acceptance of mobile payments (25%). Less popular services included targeted offers based on consumer preferences and shopping history (12%) and integration with mass transit (9%).

“We are seeing a maturing of the mobile payments market, as we move from a service that is driven by person-to-person payments to one that must tackle the challenges of the retail environment,” said Diarmuid Mallon, lead, Global Mobile Marketing Programs, SAP. “It is clear from our survey that in addition to improving the payment experience, mobile wallet apps need to support a multitude of services such as loyalty and couponing.”

The anticipated leaders of future successful mobile payments offerings included banks (29%); online payment schemes, such as PayPal, Apple iTunes or Amazon Payments (28%);credit cards (26%) or a consortium of operators (26%). This statistic diverged slightly from the 2012 SAP Mobile World Congress Survey, which anticipated banks (24%) and mobile operators (26%) would be important catalysts, but placed lower expectations on credit cards (10%) and online payment networks (19%).

The survey found that 34% of the respondents felt that applications like Apple Passbook will speed up brands offering wallet services. In regard to changes in the mobile wallet, only 28% of mobile insiders expected new ticketing and coupon services, such as Apple Passbook, Google Now and the Samsung wallet app, could become an alternative to true mobile wallets; and still, 38% believed that the lack of consumer awareness and too much confusion around the offerings were holding back mobile wallet services.

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