WHILE Filipinos are highly aware of contactless payment technologies, concerns over security hobble complete market adoption, a Visa Inc. study revealed.
The Visa Study reveals that while that is so, “there is still a need to educate the market to address security concerns and highlight the benefits of using these technologies,” Visa Country Manager for the Philippines and Guam Stuart Tomlinson said in a statement.
The Visa Study revealed that Filipinos are more eager to use newer payment form factors, such as contactless-enabled payment stickers (71 percent) and smartphones (77 percent)–as opposed to the plastic card format we are familiar with–compared to Singaporeans (60 percent and 63 percent, respectively), according to the firm.
“Filipinos also show strong preference (78 percent) for shops that accept contactless payments over ones that do not, showing appetite to incorporate contactless payments into everyday life,” Visa said.
Prizing faster transactions and convenience in everyday life, Filipino consumers remain positively inclined towards contactless payment cards, the study revealed. In fact, majority of Filipino consumers (80 percent) would avail of a contactless payment card if it was made optional by their banks. Amongst these respondents, Filipino working adults, between the ages of 24 to 44, show the most interest in using contactless payment methods such as Visa payWave.
The Visa Study reveals Filipino consumers are highly aware of contactless payment solutions (62 percent), but only two out of 10 have actually used contactless payment cards to pay for their transactions.
“This is due to the widespread misunderstanding of how contactless payment technology works,” the company said in a statement.
Though the security technology of contactless payment solutions are in the cutting edge, consumers are still worried about fraudulent use of lost cards (83 percent) and being billed accidentally for transactions (78 percent), the study revealed.
This leads to the Philippines falling behind neighbors like Singapore in adopting contactless payment technologies, where 87 percent of respondents are aware of the technology and 55 percent have used it.
Compared to consumers from Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore, the Philippines recorded the highest interest in contactless payment methods, the study revealed.
The level of openness on such method in Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore were recorded at only 58 percent, 55 percent and 30 percent, respectively. The Visa study reveals that six out of 10 Filipino consumers are open to contactless payment methods.
“Visa sees this as an opportunity not only to promote a more convenient payment solution, but also reinforce the level of security” that our product carries, Tomlinson said.
The Visa Consumer Payment Attitudes Study 2014 was conducted in July 2014 by BlackBox Research on behalf of Visa. Demographics of the respondents were male and female credit card holders above the ages of 18 year olds and holders of at least one general purpose card (credit card). There were 500 respondents in each of the four markets and interviews were conducted online with representative quotas of gender and age. The study surveyed 2000 consumers in Singapore, Malaysia, The Philippines and Thailand.
“The positive attitude among Filipinos towards emerging payment technologies is a sign that the country is gearing up for a cashless society,” Tomlinson added.