Mobile phones have increasingly become tools that consumers use for banking, payments, budgeting, and shopping. Given the rapid pace of developments in the area of mobile finance, the Federal Reserve Board began conducting annual surveys of consumers’ use of mobile financial services in 2011. This 78-page report, “Consumers and Mobile Financial Services” (March, 2015) examines trends in the adoption and use of mobile banking, payments, and shopping behavior and how the emergence of mobile financial services affects consumers’ interaction with financial institutions.
Loyalty Programs Next Frontier in Mobile Payments
Even as credit unions are figuring out the emerging space that is mobile payments, there already are glimpses of the next frontier — adding loyalty programs to mobile.
For years the concept of loyalty was simple: consumers used their credit and debit cards to make purchases and earned rewards by doing so. With the advent of mobile payments, however, suddenly the picture becomes much murkier. [Read more…]