Are We Ready for Mobile Payments? MasterCard Answers
MasterCard launched the first interactive and visually captivating m-commerce tool – the Mobile Payments Readiness Index (MPRI) – today at CTIA Wireless in New Orleans and answers the question: “Is the world ready to adopt mobile payments?” MasterCard partners will accelerate the trend toward using smartphones as our e-wallet – a significant change from the way consumers first started swiping credit cards to make payments nearly 30 years ago. Gary Flood, President, Global Products and Solutions at MasterCard, will be sharing more about this in his Keynote on Tuesday, May 8th. Click here to interact with the tool.
By analyzing the markets in 34 countries, the MPRI scale (ranked from 0 to 100) shows an average of 33.2 so there’s still work to be done. No market reached 50, a distant result from achieving 100 which represents complete replacement of plastic cards by mobile devices. According to MasterCard, 60 represents the inflection point at which most mobile devices would account for an appreciable share of the payments mix.
The MPRI is comprised of six attributes:
- Consumer Readiness: Kenya scores the highest with 89% of Kenyans being familiar with mobile payments and 68% making mobile person-to-person (P2P) payments frequently;
- Environment: With a high household expenditure per capita (nearly $33,000) compared to the average of about $11,000, the United States has the leading spot of environmental/technological readiness;
- Financial Services: Japan has the most developed financial services sector; each resident uses about 15 payment cards per person and gives exceptionally high ratings for how financial institutions treat their customers;
- Infrastructure: 100% of Singapore’s population is covered by a mobile network compared to a 94% average for the MPRI sampling;
- Mobile Commerce Clusters: Canada leads this component with high levels of cooperation among banks, mobile networks and governmental agencies; and
- Regulation: Singapore also leads in this area because of its well-developed laws relating to information and communication technology.
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