How Would You Prefer to Pay?
Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson writes: At Glenbrook, we often conclude one of our Payments Boot Camps with an informal poll of participants on their favored cash replacement form factor (mobile phone, fingerprint, etc.) At a private payments workshop in San Francisco last week, we were surprised by the strength of that group's response in favor of fingerprint. We decided to test it out (still pretty informally!) with a quick Facebook poll.
We asked:
"How would you prefer to pay for cash purchases (for example, for lunch or coffee) in the future?"
Answer Options:
- "Using a card that I tap or wave at checkout"
- "Using a card fob on my keychain"
- "Using my cell phone (linked to card payment)"
- "Using my fingerprint (linked to card payment)"
- "I'd rather stick with cash"
The responses came from two age groups, 18-24 and 35-49. Each group had 100 responders.
We were again interested in the strength of preference for fingerprint - in both age groups, but particularly for the younger group.
The biggest surprise? The apparent lack of interest in mobile payments!
But of course (and we all know this...) cash still rules!
Stumble It!
I wonder how mag-stripe debit and mag-stripe credit would fare. In theory, mag-stripe credit should be the most popular (free loan, known behavior).
I think fingerprint would go way down if you actually had participants do it based on creepiness factor.
Not sure what you had in mind with mobile. If it's "swiping" it, then I can see it being somewhat popular. If it has anything to do with typing on a mobile phone, I'd would think it'd be close to zero.
Posted by: pwb | October 08, 2007 at 12:48 PM
I don't know why Glenbrook finds that the results for a preference for biometrics, or fingerscans so surprising.
According to a Feb '07 research report from Unisys: entitled: " U.S. and U.K. Consumers Push for Biometric Technology in Wake of Rising Security Threats", I'll provide a quote: "an even greater percent of U.S. consumers (69 percent) and U.K. consumers (92 percent) would prefer that banks, credit card companies, healthcare providers and government organizations adopt biometric technologies, as compared to other protection measures such as smart card readers, security tokens or passwords/PINs, to safely and quickly verify personal identities." Here's the link: http://www.unisys.com/about__unisys/news_a_events/02058750.htm
I would suggest that if you called it a "fingerscan" instead of a "fingerprint" and put it as the 1st, 2nd or 3rd choice instead of the 4th and final, it would get an even higher response rate.
Posted by: John B. | October 09, 2007 at 03:05 PM