In August 2011, PayPal conducted a consumer survey among people who had made (or attempted) at least one mobile purchase in the previous 12 months. From this survey, PayPal learned the following: anyone who makes a mobile payment is likely to do so again, most retail purchases (i.e. not digital) were valued at more than $100, and mobile payments should accelerate during the 2011 holiday season. PayPal cited these results as a reason that they are continuing their push to be the dominant mobile payment method.
PayPal claims that over half of mobile buyers use the service as their payment method of choice. That is probably not too far from the truth. As we have noted before, near-field communications options are still years from widespread adoption and the dongle-based half of the industry (between Square, Intuit and others) is still in growth mode.
In addition, the survey showed that the majority of mobile purchases occur inside the shopper’s home. This had led to PayPal dubbing mobile shopping as “couch commerce.”