NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Studies show mobile payments are now the cheapest method of transacting – at about 8 US cents (83c) a transaction compared with $0.17 online and $3.75 in bank branches. But 44 percent of people surveyed by Ericsson are not taking advantage of this because they do not trust mobile money or mobile commerce (m-commerce).

These transaction costs represent an average of numerous studies done by consulting firms, including PwC and Capgemini.

About 75 percent of all transactions around the globe are still done in hard cash, even though figures from Mastercard show cash handling costs eat into a country’s gross domestic product by between 0.6 percent and 1.5 percent.