Survey says consumers don’t trust Apple, Google, or Facebook when it comes to mobile payments

Findings from a survey
conducted on 500 U.S. based “online shoppers” by Ogilvy & Mather,
one of the world’s largest advertising firms, suggests that consumers
don’t trust companies like Apple, Facebook, or Google when it comes to
mobile payments.



In fact, Facebook scored the worst, being trusted
by only 12.1% of the people surveyed. Microsoft, at 22.3%, is trusted by
more people than Google, at 19.5%. Apple is trusted by a little more than 1 out of every 5
consumers, 22.9%, but they’re still behind the United States Postal
Service at 24.6% trust. Who is leading? It shouldn’t come as a surprise
that it’s Visa, MasterCard, and American Express, with 39.6%, 35.9%, and
35.8% respectively. What’s shocking is how many people trust PayPal, at
34.3%. What does this mean for you? Not much since right now the
current mobile payment landscape is a battlefield between card issuers
such as Visa and MasterCard, operators, who actually teamed up to form
Isis in an attempt to get the ball rolling on mobile payments, and the
new kids on the block, like Apple, Google, Nokia, etc.


Who is going to win the fight for your new age wallet? It’s difficult
to say, but we hope we don’t end up in a situation where your banking
information is tied to one particular ecosystem. Consumers shouldn’t
have to feel terrified at the thought of their mobile payments not
working if they switch operators or get bored of Facebook or want to switch from iOS to Android. In Europe
the standard that’s currently being pushed is called SWP, short for
Single Wire Protocol. It’s a way for the NFC element in your phone to
connect to your SIM card to prove you are who you say you are, sort of
like how you’re required to show a photo ID sometimes when making credit
card purchases. In the UK it’s currently being rolled out, but only on a
select crop of dumb phones no one really wants to use.


With time this will all make sense and sort itself out, but right now
we just want to see more NFC enabled phones on the market!