A survey of New Zealanders undertaken by Venture Insights has found almost 23 percent using their smartphones at least once a week to pay for a product or service, with bank payment apps accounting for 62 percent of these.
Apple Pay came in second with 19 percent of users, Android Pay was third with 13 percent and Samsung Pay fourth with six percent.
However, 50 percent of respondents said they had never used their mobile to pay for products and service and Venture Insights said this indicated there was an opportunity for payment apps to create greater awareness around the benefits and convenience of mobile payments and increase adoption.
“Increasing adoption of payment apps is only a matter of time as more than a third of Kiwis believe that New Zealand will be a cashless economy by 2028,” Venture Insights said.
“Business owners expect New Zealand to be cashless by 2028 and more than one in three customers predict that New Zealand will be cashless within 10 years, while a further 42 percent believe it will take 20 years.”
It said credit cards were by far the most popular means of making payments in New Zealand and the money being made by the issuing banks made these an attractive market for companies providing mobile payments.
“The total value of transactions by cards in New Zealand is about $6bn to $7b per month and growing,” it said. “On average the issuing bank makes 1.5 percent of every transaction. This translates into an annual revenue potential of about $1.2b, certainly large enough for non-bank players to be interested.”
The report concluded: “While the mobile wallet and payments space may still be nascent, the above trends bode well for the growth of mobile wallet and payments systems.”