Payments Executives See Mobile Wallets as Disruptive, but Also as Opportunities

Carrying out business as usual is becoming harder to do as the payments business tries to adapt to new technologies. Asked at a recent San Francisco conference about what are the most disruptive trends in payments, 40% of industry professionals and alternative-finance executives polled cited the proliferation of mobile-wallet use and 30% cited the adoption of EMV chip card payments.

The survey by New York City-based merchant-financing company CAN Capital Inc. garnered 210 responses at the Electronic Transactions Association’s Transact 15 conference March 31-April 2.

While they may regard mobile payments and EMV as disruptive, the payments executives see opportunities, especially with mobile. Seventy percent of respondents said mobile payments have shown the most growth among merchant-focused product offerings over the past year. Asked which trends will have the largest impact on consumer spending habits in 2015, 36% of respondents cited mobile-wallet technologies, followed by 27% who said “online/mobile marketing practices,” according to a CAN Capital release.

The respondents’ merchant customers, however, appear to lag in their knowledge of and expectations for mobile payments, as well as marketing strategies targeting mobile devices. According to a different CAN Capital survey dubbed the Small Business Health Index, 87% of small businesses currently do not accept mobile payments and only 11% say “mobile targeting is an important component of their digital-marketing strategies,” according to the release.

CAN Capital’s surveys come in a year in which mobile-payments services such as Apple Pay and Google Wallet are gaining ground, albeit from very small bases, and merchants face a major deadline in October for installing point-of-sale terminals that can read EMV chip cards. In addition to bolstering the security of physical card transactions, EMV terminals are expected to boost mobile payments because most such terminals likely will be capable of handling payments from smart phones equipped with near-field communication (NFC) technology.

While 20% of respondents at Transact 15 said adoption of EMV will have the largest impact on consumers’ spending habits this year, the recent CAN Capital Small Business Health Index survey found that while more than half, 55%, of small businesses are familiar with EMV, only 18% have taken steps to update their POS systems for chip card acceptance.

“As the payments industry shifts toward mobile offerings and EMV-enabled credit cards, we must make sure we continue to engage with and educate the small businesses who will be using these new tools in their everyday business dealings,” Dan DeMeo, CAN Capital’s chief executive, said in the release.