China is ahead of the curve in the country’s adoption of mobile wallet technology, outpacing the combined adoption rates of Spain, Germany, the US and Argentina by nearly 5 to 1, according to an Assurant Solutions study into mobile wallet adoption rates.
The study was conducted among mobile device owners in December 2011. A total of 5,032 respondents were surveyed across Spain, Germany, the US, China and Argentina. 52 per cent of Chinese respondents indicated that they are mobile wallet users, compared to a combined total of 12 per cent within the other four countries.
The study defines a mobile wallet user as a respondent engaging in three or more mobile wallet transactions, such as online banking, paying bills, making a purchase online, making a purchase in store by swiping their phone near a payment terminal, and peer-to-peer financial transactions.
The results form part of the latest consumer survey on mobile trends conducted by Assurant Solutions, a global insurance and risk management company, and reveal a number of variations across the five countries. 
Chinese adoption rates of each transaction type are, in general, much higher than other surveyed countries. The US trails behind several countries in usage of more basic mobile functions such as texting, browsing, and social media. Reloading talk and/or data minutes has a higher adoption rate in Argentina (17 per cent), Germany (15 per cent) and China (47 per cent) which aligns with the higher rate of non-contract subscribers in these countries. The largest variance in adoption rates between countries can be seen in peer-to-peer transactions, with a high of 40 per cent in China and a low of 14 per cent in Germany; paying subscriptions for online newspapers and magazines (a high of 50 per cent in China and a low of 15 per cent in Argentina); and reloading talk and/or data minutes (a high of 71 per cent in China and a low of 17 per cent in the US).
“While consumers generally remain wary about opening their mobile wallet, there are some real variations across the globe,” notes Nino Treusch, head of mobile business development for Europe at Assurant Solutions. “When it comes to their mobile wallet, however, there was a common response that protection matters. Consumers across all five countries expressed an exponentially higher interest in mobile transactions if secure protection products were an option.”
The Assurant Solutions research revealed that the overall frequency of mobile transactions can be increased by 21 per cent among current mobile wallet users, and by 36 per cent among non-adopters, if the transaction is protected or guaranteed.
“Additional protection for devices and data will play a key part in unlocking the potential of the mobile wallet,” says Treusch. “We’re continuing to analyse consumer behaviour and gain further insight into consumer trends to help inform our mobile partners and improve the protection products and services we provide to them and their customers.”
