Recent studies reproposed in an interesting post on the site Mobile Payments Today identify with a nice name, the Smartphonatic, a new type of consumer who from the analyzes are individuals who change their purchasing and payment habits on the basis of what the smartphone offers them. The analysis was conducted in over 14 countries by one of the largest e-payment providers the ACI Worldwide, who introduced this nice definition after analyzing the purchasing and payment processes of around 4200 consumers in the first quarter of 2012.

Even before going into the merits of some interesting numbers to analyse, I found the fact demoralizing that abroad (as usual 🙂 ), what we still struggle to metabolize culturally, is in fact already a custom and a process used by millions of people: pay for services and products using their mobile phone or smartphone. We will get there but as usual at the cost of being followers of others and embalmed and "protected" by the countless institutions, regulations and bureaucracies that will arise in Italy to CONTROL the system. So if it gives me so much looking at the public administration, I imagine that if abroad they will click 2 to pay, we in Italy will click 3 if not 4 and they will tell us that it is for our good! But in Florence you buy the bus ticket with an SMS! In Milan, some parking is enabled via SMS! and so on…

Returning to the numbers, read them with curiosity because INDIA is starting to be represented in many statistics! will it mean anything? here in Italy do you know what the Indians do? Well you better run to figure it out, I'm a new superpower!

  • Smartphones are numerous in India, China, South Africa, US and Europe. The percentage in India is 60%, followed by South Africa with 42% while in the US the percentage is 20% and Canada is only 7%.
  • In India, however, mobile banking is 76%. Small consolation for us on which I can not find data!
  • The use of the smartphone for payments is declared used by more than 2/3 of users in China and India against only 13% of the French.
  • The age of this category of consumers is between 20 and 31 years. The range between 47 and 65 is 18% and further on we are at 6%.

Interesting but premature to talk about it. In Italy it is better to think about the mobile loyalty that it would already be a great result to be able to replace the dozens of cards with your smartphone and with the opportunity to always have the possibility of verifying the points collected and their conversion into promotions under control. Maybe cross brand wouldn't really be discarded as a benefit instead of carrying around a small computer to make calls and play, right friends?