Are Mobile Phone Payments Going To Surpass Credit Cards?

Many people are only just getting to grips with the fact we're edging closer and closer to a cashless society. But such is the pace of technology we may also be saying goodbye to our flexible friends as credit cards are being replaced by mobile payments.

It's estimated that over 47% of people in China now use mobile wallets to pay while in Norway that percentage is 42% and the UK, 24%. That's a significant proportion given it's a relatively new concept and puts the card in significant danger of extinction.

Methods of payment are becoming much less physical no matter what the industry. In stores we can now pay via our smartphones, our travel cards are hooked directly to our bank accounts and even in online gaming we can simply sync up our mobile phone account and play the best pay by mobile slots today. That means there's absolutely no need to enter card details, it is simply added to your bill at the end of the month.

These new methods are edging the more traditional formats of payment out and the new generation are certainly favouring mobile ahead of carrying around a physical wallet.

That's only going to continue. By 2022 it's estimated that $14trillion will be spent via mobile pay and it makes sense with security measures forever increasing.

Predictions are expecting that digital wallets will surpass card payments by 2021, and will even more useful ways such as phone bill charging and cryptocurrency also popular we could be completely virtual sooner than we think.

As you'd probably expect it's millenials who have adopted it the quickest. Around half of 18-34 year olds use a mobile wallet, compared to just 20% of those 65+. That will change with education though as more and more people realise it's the smarter option.

Online wallets and brands like Android Pay and Apple Pay use incredibly secure systems and technology. They don't actually use cardholder data to connect with outside payment devices, but rather technology called tokenization which essentially encrypts your data to ensure secure payment.

That's on top of a number of other safety features which make it much more security conscious than carrying around your credit card in your pocket.

This is starting to become more understood by people and whether it be mobile phone bill payments to gaming sites or using Apple Pay in a department store, the less you connect your own bank details with other networks, the less chance you have of having your data breached.

Over the next few years, mobile payment is going to continue to transform how we live our lives. Wearable tech is already allowing us to use this as a method of payment, while mobile wallets are only going to get more secure and simple for us to use.

The cashless society is almost complete. The cardless is also well and truly on the horizon.