Mobile payments adoption is patchy, but it's getting a higher profile in social media.
Social media conversations about mobile payments globally rose 20 percent last year, while discussions specifically about mobile wallets doubled year over year, according to a Mastercard study.
India leads the world in social media discussions about mobile wallets, with 30 percent of mentions in conversations about payments. Consumers specifically mentioned mobile wallets used for public transit and QR code-based payments—such as India’s popular PaytmQR option. The U.S. ranked second behind India, with 10 percent of payments-related conversations touching on the topic of mobile wallets on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
In South Africa, mobile wallets were mentioned in 7 percent of social media conversations about payments and in Europe mobile wallets were the focus of 5 percent of payments-related social media conversations.
The data suggests growing consumer interest and demand for mobile payments, Rose Beaumont, Mastercard’s senior vice president of European communications and sales enablement, said in the release.
Last year about 100,000 social media conversations touched on payments, up from 79,000 in 2017, according to Mastercard. Mobile payments as a whole accounted for more than 27 percent of all social media conversations around payments in 2018.
Prime Research gathered the data from 3.3 million global consumers for Mastercard’s sixth annual digital payments study, noting an overall uptick in payments-related discussions on social media platforms worldwide.
