News

Study: EMV will drive adoption of mobile technologies

June 20, 2013

Payment systems provider ACI Worldwide has released the results of a new survey that examines industry trends related to EMV, mobile payments and banking, fraud and innovation. Nearly half of the survey respondents (49 percent) believe the U.S. migration to EMV will cause consumers to turn away from card-based transactions in favor of mobile payments. 

"It was interesting and frankly a bit surprising to see data that so strongly indicates a belief that consumers will move away from physical cards in lieu of mobile," said Dan Heimann, consulting manager of ACI Worldwide and vice-chairman of the EMV steering committee of the EMV Migration Forum. "Given these findings, I'm more intrigued than ever to watch the rollout and adoption rates for EMV cards."

Survey respondents acknowledged challenges in rolling out new payment systems:

• 32 percent said the greatest challenge would be rolling out hardware updates (e.g., POS terminals, ATMs);
• 26 percent said it would be educating and training business constituents and driving consumer awareness and adoption; and
• 24 percent said it would be meeting compliance and liability shift deadlines.

Only 15 percent said that uniform EMV standards would propel adoption and rollout.

More than 60 percent of survey respondents said that either mobile banking (35 percent) or mobile payments (27 percent) were most likely to be adopted within the next year. Just 10 percent said that mobile wallets would become widely adopted over the next two years.

"So much time and attention have been paid to the rise of the mobile wallet," said Matt Ellis, SVP of online and mobile at ACI Worldwide. "But our findings show that banks and retailers alike may not be willing to relinquish control to third-party providers just yet ... you're going to see bank and retail brands work hard to maintain ownership of their mobile channels."

Survey respondents said the following would pose the greatest obstacle to the implementation of mobile solutions:

• fraud (35 percent);
• lack of integration with core system software (27 percent);
• implementing hardware infrastructure to support mobile (15 percent);
• lack of consistent industry standards (13 percent);
• lack of market interest (7 percent); and 
• competition from new entrants (4 percent).

Read more about the survey findings.

The survey of 201 retail, banking and processor professionals was conducted by ACI Worldwide at the 2013 ACI Exchange Americas Conference in Boston, Mass., June 4-6. The event is an annual gathering of ACI customers and partners.

Read more about trends and statistics.