Indian consumers are still not confident that mobile payments are secure enough to make it their first choice for making a financial transaction. A study by Deloitte said 29% of consumers feel that security is a concern and recent cyber fraud involving a digital wallet will not make consumers bring out their phones more frequently, despite demonetization.
The Deloitte survey found that smartphone users’ most important financial transaction was checking their bank balance, with around 54% of those surveyed doing so. More than 50% of consumers use smartphones to pay utility bills (54%) and other service bills (53%), followed by transferring money (38%).
A large segment of consumers said lack of benefits and credit card rewards give them less incentive to make mobile payments. It indicates that once the cashback offers on mobile wallets come down, consumers might not use this payment mode frequently.
According to the research, e-commerce websites are the primary choice for customers to purchase smartphones in India, with 54% consumers buying online, while 39% of smartphone owners still bought their phones in-store. It added that that for most smartphone owners in India, the reliance on WiFi has reduced considerably because of higher penetration of mobile data and also indicating the higher mobility among urban professionals.
The report said that 4G adoption is expected to grow strongly over the next year to become the predominant data network with about 45% of the respondents planning to subscribe 4G or LTE in the next 12 months.
Instant messaging (74%), social network (64%) and email (63%) saw the highest growth in usage frequency among smartphone users. Over 2,000 Indian consumers participated in Deloitte’s Global Mobile Consumer Survey.
The sample is that of a high earning urban professional aged between 18 and 54. The majority of respondents installed 20 apps or less in addition to all the pre-installed apps.
