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The number of consumers in APAC making purchases via their smartphones is surging and will continue to accelerate in the coming years

How many times have you booked a movie ticket or a hotel room through an app? Odds are, it’s second nature to you now.

Increased innovation in the mobile payment space are helping consumers reduce not only their reliance on their wallets, but are also giving them to freedom to transact anywhere. In smartphone-obsessed Asia, multiple messaging apps such as WeChat, Line and KakaoTalk have capitalised on this trend by embedding these mobile payment functions in their apps.

A report recently released by MasterCard, the data — extrapolated from interviews of 8,500 smartphone users aged 16-64 across 14 markets in APAC between October to December 2015 — clearly shows that the surge in mobile payment adoption is not subsiding anytime soon. Here are some key highlights from the findings.

Also Read: Infographic: Two charts to breakdown mobile payment platforms

India leads China in mobile payments, but…

Overall, 48.5 per cent of the respondents said they made at least one mobile payment transaction in the past three months.

Breaking it down, India was the most receptive to using mobile payments (76.4 percent), while China came just 0.3 percent shy of it. South Korea stands at 62 per cent followed by Thailand is at 61.1 per cent.

India is the also fastest growing mobile payment market. In the past two years, mobile payment transactions grew by 29.3 per cent. Vietnam and Singapore grew by 17.7 per cent and 17.1 per cent respectively.

That said, in therms of digital wallet adoption, China displayed more promising results. 45 per cent of its smartphone users made transactions via digital wallets, far ahead of India (36.7 per cent) and Singapore (23.3 per cent).

The countries down under have yet to catch up with the rest of APAC. Only 23.7 per cent of the Australian respondents made mobile transactions, while in New Zealand, it’s even lower (16.2 per cent).

Also Read: IDC predicts mobile payments in APAC to reach US$1T by 2017

Motivations behind transacting on smartphones

More than 53.9 per cent of the respondents said convenience was the key driver behind the move to shop using their smartphones; 42.9 per cent said it was the ability to shop on the go; 41.4 per cent said growing availability of apps that make it easy to shop online was a factor.

Clothing and accessories were the most popular category of mobile purchases (35 per cent), followed by personal and beauty care products (20.9 per cent) and movie tickets (20.4 per cent).

For the full report, click here.

Also Read: What is the key to building a Fort Knox for the mobile payment space?

The post India leads APAC in mobile payments adoption, followed by China: MasterCard survey appeared first on e27.

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