This Holiday Season, we’ve been sharing some rarely-seen data from a project we took on last year, partnering with PayPal to find out where the breaks are between retailer perceptions of in-store holiday shopping and consumers’ reports of what that experience was actually like. In the first article, we discussed how long holiday shopping lines have become, and in the second, how frequently customers will leave stores as a result of those lines. In both cases, we were surprised to see how drastically retailers underestimated each problem. This will be the third and final segment in the series, and today we’re looking at the future of payments.

As you can see from Figure 1, retailers from various regions of the globe have wildly different perceptions of which payment methods hold their customers’ fancy. For example, Japanese retailers think their customers put an enormous value on cash, while German retailers see absolutely zero consumer interest in paying via credit card.

Figure 1

However, when we asked consumers what payment types they prefer to pay with most – today – we see that their interest in various payment forms is far more widespread than retailers’ current understanding.

Figure 2

Where this starts to get even more interesting is when we started asking about the future of payment types. This is how retailers expect that consumers will want to pay in 3 (now 2) years’ time:

Figure 3

With the notable exceptions of Russia and Japan, when asked to look through the looking glass, most retailers the world over realize that the payment landscape is facing some degree of change. In fact, Brazilian retailers seem most poised to handle new payment types as they emerge.

However, take a look at how consumers answer that same question (Figure 4).

Figure 4

Consumers see incredible change in the near term payment landscape. They see the very near future as a place of drastic change, paying for their purchases any-which way they want. Worldwide interest in mobile/digital payments exceeds retailers’ expectations – in many instances by a large margin – and in virtually every region studied. In particular, note how far removed Russian retailers’ predictions are from those of their customers.

Again, these are just some of the findings from this particular research. If you are interested in the full results, we’d be happy to share them. Just drop us a line. Happy Holidays!