PayPal Australia has launched the PayPal mCommerce Index, a biannual barometer on the state of mobile commerce in Australia. The finds a significant gap between consumer mobile payments behaviour and the readiness of businesses to support mobile transactions. Furthermore, the Index identifies social commerce as the next frontier of online commerce for Australian businesses.
The mobile payment opportunity gap
The research finds a high level of mobile commerce adoption among Australian consumers, with 71% of respondents reporting that they use their mobile devices to make payments and 22% indicating they spend more than $500 per month via mobile.
Despite this, the Index finds that only 49% of online businesses are optimised to accept mobile payments, presenting an opportunity gap for Australian businesses looking to capitalise on mobile-savvy customers. Furthermore, almost one-third (31%) of businesses state they have no plans to optimise for mobile sales, which is reflected in the proportion of online businesses (26%) which have zero sales via mobile devices.
Libby Roy, Managing Director, PayPal Australia highlighted the clear opportunity gap for Australian businesses: “Australia has one of the highest levels of mobile penetration globally with 80% of the Australian population owning a smartphone, so I was surprised to discover the low level of business readiness to accept sales effectively via mobile devices.”
mCommerce drivers and barriers
Australians shop on their mobile devices because they love the convenience (48%), it saves time (48%) and it’s easy (39%). However, when looking at the barriers to mCommerce, it is the younger consumers who are most annoyed when websites are not enabled for mobile (59%) compared to 45% for 35-49 and 28% for over-50s. Security was also a significant concern for respondents, with 46% citing it as a barrier to mCommerce adoption.
David McLeod, Roy Morgan Research Analyst, comments on the potential business impact of consumers’ security concerns: “The 46% of respondents concerned with security were less likely to be weekly mobile purchasers and also had a 24% lower average spend on mobile devices compared to the total smartphone users. This implies a clear need for consumer education and support around the security and integrity of online payments”.
Social commerce
Social commerce, shopping via a social platform, has emerged as the new frontier for online commerce. Already 11% of Australian consumers report that they have made a purchase via a social platform in the past 6 months and 7% of Australian businesses indicate they accept transactions via social media.
Social media is also shown to be a strong channel for driving purchases with 18% of respondents buying something after seeing it on social media, a figure that jumps to 24% among the 18-34 age group. Despite this, 28% of businesses don’t believe their customers want to buy via social media platforms.
Security was a significant barrier for consumers in relation to purchasing through social media platforms with roughly half stating that security and safety is a concern and 59% stating they don’t want their financial information linked to their social footprint.
“If we look at the history of commerce in Australia we know that the incidence of internet purchases, over a 3 month period, back in 1999 was approximately 5%. In 15 years it’s certainly possible that purchasing via social media by smartphone users will be as ubiquitous as online payments are now,” commented David McLeod, Roy Morgan Research Analyst.
PayPal’s mCommerce Index will be an ongoing, twice-yearly barometer on the state of mobile commerce in Australia. The full report is available for download here:
https://www.paypal.com/au/webapps/mpp/mcommerce-index.
