Yahoo Finance Canadians quick to pull out their phones but slow to check out
Canadians are more apt to use their mobile phones for researching price and product availability while shopping compared to other countries but when it comes to checking out, a mere two per cent use their phones to pay.
Nearly four-in-ten (38 per cent) Canadians say the last time they used their phone or tablet to help them shop was in a store, according to a study by market researcher GfK’s annual FutureBuy. Of the 20 countries surveyed, Canada sits in third place next to the United Kingdom at 40 per cent and India at 42 per cent. China sat at 30 per cent.
“Canadian shoppers feel comfortable using their mobile devices for a variety of shopping activities – learning about products, checking availability, and reading reviews,” says Stephen Popiel, Vice President at GfK Canada in a release touting the study. “But mobile payments still represent a small minority of purchases.”
According to the report, only two per cent of Canadians actually took advantage of checking out with their phones via mobile payments, far lower than China’s 24 per cent and close to the U.K.’s three per cent.
While Canada has seen wide adoption of payment through credit cards with tap features – contact-less transactions account for 27 per cent of all payments in Canada versus the global average of 15 per cent, according to the study – mobile has yet to become a go-to.
“With the prevalence of contactless debit and credit usage, consumers are already getting a lot of the convenience of a mobile wallet,” says Popiel. “Financial institutions and merchants will need to create a more compelling value proposition to give mobile payments a shot at their breakthrough moment.”
GfK’s study found that 45 per cent of Canadians say mobile payments are “more of a gimmick today than a major part of how I pay” and 57 per cent cite security surrounding personal information as a deterrent.
If the findings are any indicator, with contact-less payment already firmly cemented amongst Canadians shopping habits, mobile payments aren’t likely to become a go-to for consumers any time soon. But for the six-in-ten Canadians not using their mobile phones for shopping theres room for improvement. Here are four apps to help save you money in store:
Cataloguing deals from over 50,000 retailers, RetailMeNot’s app pulls up a map of all the offers nearby, sends you push notifications on deals and lets you redeem coupons by scanning the barcodes directly from your phone at the cashier. Lightyears ahead of Aunt Gladys’ couponing A-game.
No longer do you need to carry that briefcase of flyers around with you, it’s 2016, you’ve arrived in the digital era. Flipp takes flyers and coupons from 200 plus brands and makes the searchable so you can get straight to the deals while shopping in-store. You can also clip items from the flyers and add them to your shopping list right in your phone for east reference later.
Using your smartphone’s camera, ShopSavvy lets you scan the barcode on products and compare prices from stores like H&M and Costco, helping you find out where the best deals are, get cash back and keep tabs on price drops. It’s like having one of those cool in-store scanners all to yourself.
Checkout 51 centres its app on cash back. It’s a simple enough model: browse the weeks available deals (posted on Thursdays), buy them at any store, take a photo of the receipt, earn anywhere from $0.50 to $2.00 credit into your Checkout 51 account and when it reaches $20, they’ll send a check in the mail. Christmas comes early.
