Report: Payments Help Merchants Fight Consumer App Fatigue

The App Store and the Google Play Store collectively offer more than 5 million mobile apps offering every type of service imaginable — ridesharing apps, music and video streaming apps, aggregator apps, banking apps, quick-service restaurant (QSR) apps and retail merchant apps, among countless others.

Yet, for all the millions of apps available, 77.6 percent of consumers keep only five or fewer merchant apps on their mobile phones at any given time.

This leaves little room for the average retail merchant looking to engage their customers via mobile apps. Not only are they competing to get customers to download their app, they also having to compete against retailers that have seemingly become a fixture in consumers’ daily lives. When asked, 51.8 percent of consumers who want to download more apps say they would download Amazon’s, 51.3 percent would download Walmart’s and 34 percent would download Target’s, to name a few.

So what can retailers to do to catch their customers’ attention and convince them to download and use their apps?

This is just one of the questions PYMNTS sought to answer in the new Which Apps Will They Use? Engaging Brick-And-Mortar Shoppers Via Mobile Apps report, in collaboration with LISNR. We surveyed 1,045 American consumers to learn how they use the apps of their favorite merchants to enhance their in-store shopping experiences, and what in-app features might entice them to download more apps, going forward.

Our research shows that one of the key in-app features in which consumers expressed interest was the ability to skip the checkout line. An astounding 85.1 percent of consumers respondents said they would be interested in downloading a merchant’s app if it meant they did not have to stand in line at the store.

Another in-demand feature was secure virtual card offerings, with 49.8 percent of respondents saying they would be interested in downloading a merchant’s app if they could use it to store their card information digitally.

Yet, consumers’ interest in using merchant mobile apps extends far beyond the checkout counter.

To learn more about how merchants can design apps that not only make in-store payments easier, but which also add-value to their broader in-store experiences, download the report.