If you were accepting credit cards at your business on Black Friday, you might not be surprised to know the following:
Hyped-up payment apps and mobile wallets did not perform as well as predicted on Black Friday.
According to Fortune, Black Friday shopping online was up compared to years past where Cyber Monday has been heralded for driving online sales. A survey from the National Retail Federation last week estimated that nearly 109 million Americans shopped online over the holiday shopping weekend, almost 10 million more than the number of consumers who braved the stores the day after Thanksgiving. Last year’s numbers were about an even split for all businesses accepting credit cards.
Of the retail shoppers, 90% used a credit card in stores on Black Friday, based on a report from Cayan; surprisingly, mobile phone payments accounted for just a minuscule 0.6% of payments made.
This begs the question: what happened? Surely, consumers are more tech-savvy than that.
Despite our best predictions, smartphone payments at businesses accepting credit cards have been slowed by a few roadblocks: a lack of consumer incentives, difficulty with compatibility with in-store in-line solutions, and possibly an overwhelming amount of options that are available. From mobile tech companies to retail stores all the way to the credit card companies themselves, it seems like everyone and their mother has a mobile payment solution on their smartphone.
Many in the industry are concluding that consumers did in fact use their phones to make a payment this year, but never set foot in an actual store. Online spending rose by 18% on Black Friday and on Thanksgiving, shoppers spent $5.3 billion online. 36% of all online shopping (up from 34% in 2015) in these instances was completed on a mobile phone or tablet, a number that is 60 times higher than the usage rate of mobile phones in stores.
