On social media we often discuss artificial intelligence, virtual reality and wearables too – shows the fifth edition of the Mastercard Digital Payments Study, developed through an analysis of 3.5 million user posts.

Digital wallets are growing in importance, which is reflected in online discussions about modern payment methods. An analysis of 3.5 million social media posts shows that as many as 75% of them concern this topic. Meanwhile, the most positive attitude accompanies VR, or virtual reality (92%) — customers can already imagine confirming transactions with a simple nod of the head. Such conclusions can be drawn from the annual Mastercard Mobile Payments Study, whose fifth edition was published on the occasion of the ongoing Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

"Thanks to technology we shop more and more conveniently and more and more often without cash. This means that interest in new forms of shopping and payments has grown to a level that would have been hard to imagine just a few years ago. Such conclusions come from our latest study" — said Marcy Cohen, vice president of digital communications at Mastercard.

Internet users pave the way for the payments of the future

Digital wallets are increasingly widely accepted as forms of payment at points of sale, in online stores and in mobile apps. This is reflected in more than 2 million social media posts on the subject. The vast majority of these conversations (84%) took place on Twitter and focused on the growing availability of digital wallets and new features integrated with them, such as storing loyalty cards and paying for public transport.

Future technologies for handling payments, such as artificial intelligence or automated assistants, were topic number two — in 2016 their popularity grew significantly, and consumer interest was particularly high in the fourth quarter. The discussion was especially fueled by issues of new, smarter types of devices that could be used for shopping and paying.

  • Paying on the go - wearables, i.e. so-called "wearable devices," were the most frequently discussed topic among emerging technologies — there was discussion, among other things, about partnership cooperation between manufacturers of these devices and payment service providers. Users also passed on rumors about the integration of mobile wallets with wearables and commented on the value of health data available through these devices.
  • At your service! – Smart assistants, virtual reality and artificial intelligence also attracted interest as future technologies for handling payments. Last year consumers increasingly talked about smart assistants, imagining the ease of sending and receiving mobile payments with a single command given to such an assistant.
  • A network of connected devices: the Internet of Things was a hot topic, especially in North America and Europe (34% of all posts). The conversations concerned adding a payment function to various devices connected to the network, thanks to which the Internet of Things will become the "Internet of Payments."

"Peace of mind," or technologies that increase payment security

In discussions, internet users pointed out that the popularity of new technologies and new ways of paying will depend on security and safeguards that go beyond those offered today. Almost half of users (43%) expressed interest in biometrics and other innovative ways of authenticating payments, as a way to reduce the number of frauds and move beyond traditional passwords.

  • "I've got it at my fingertips" - The development of new technologies for authentication using facial recognition, fingerprints and touch sparked more than half of the discussion about biometric authentication solutions (51%), with the vast majority of these being positive voices.
  • Smile please! - Posts about facial recognition focused on Mastercard's Identity Check Mobile App solutions, Google's Hands Free app and Snapchat's patent for including a payment platform in real-time services.
  • Passwords to the scrap heap! Internet users complained about having to manually enter passwords, as well as remembering or resetting them. They expressed interest in methods that would allow them to replace traditional passwords with a simpler yet more advanced method of confirming identity.