Mobile wallets soar in popularity

Cash may be king, but cashless transactions are usurping the throne.

Cashless transactions had long been gaining momentum and only got more popular during the pandemic, when many businesses and customers shied away from handling paper money and coins.

The website Trading Platforms said the digital or mobile wallet payments were the most used point of sale payment method globally in 2020 and are poised to represent one-third of all POS transactions worldwide by 2024.

Digital/mobile wallet payments equated to 44 percent of the share, twice as much as credit cards and three times more than debit cards. By 2024, cash is expected to drop to just 12.7 percent of transactions.

Cashless transactions have long been a familiar sight, but mobile wallets are getting more popular.

A mobile wallet is an app on a smartphone, tablet, or smartwatch that stores credit card or debit card information and allows the phone to make the purchase. They work by tapping the phone, tablet, or watch against a compatible device at participating retailers and are generally faster than credit cards.

Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay are the most well-known and come integrated on related phones, while others can be downloaded. The transaction value of the mobile wallet sector doubled in the past two years, and the number of people using them grew from about 900 million to 1.48 billion.