For the first time ever, more merchants support mobile apps than a dedicated mobile website for online shopping. This insight is according to Kount’s 2018 Mobile Payments and Fraud Report. This staggering fact illustrates the type of dynamic changes taking place within the mobile channel.

This year’s results uncovered critical findings for payment options, channel risk, and fraud strategies, and included insights into the state of mobile wallets, top challenges for merchants, risk by channel, and more.

Mobile payments continue to evolve each year and a trend that isn’t going away are the different payment options supported by merchants:

• Support is up across the board for Near-Field Communication (up from 29% to 37%) and other mobile payments at the physical point-of-sale
• 26 percent of merchants plan to increase or add support for social commerce this year (purchases made directly through social media channels such as Instagram, Twitter, etc.)
• While merchants’ support for mobile wallets climbed from 22 to 29 percent overall, several major mobile wallets have lost traction:
  • The percentage of respondents accepting Apple Pay in 2018 is down from 48 to 35 percent, the most drastic decline of all mobile wallets, and Google Pay is down from 38 to 25 percent.

With growth and constant change, challenges continue to be prevalent. The most common challenges for mobile channel merchants, today include:

• Maintaining ease of use for the consumer (60%)
• The ability to detect fraudulent order attempts (52%)

Criminals continue to find weaknesses in merchant operations that are processing transactions online and via mobile. The channels at the most risk are:

• About half of all merchants (49%) stated that traditional eCommerce (consumers shopping from desktop browsers) is still their highest risk channel
• Mobile web browser transactions are the next most likely to be considered the highest fraud risk, as indicated by approximately 21 percent of merchants
• 18 percent of merchants say mobile app payments are the highest risk

The support for mobile can vary depending on the type of industry or annual revenue of the merchant. The industries most likely to prioritize mobile (and consider the mobile channel very important to their overall strategy) are merchants selling:

• Jewelry (71%)
• Electronics and computers (63%)
• Health/beauty products (63%)
• Apparel or accessories (56%)

To read over 50 pages worth of data related to the mobile channel, please download the full report. Additionally, Don Bush, Kount’s vice president of marketing, will be on hand presenting a keynote at this year’s Mobile Payments Conference on Wednesday August 22 at 2:00 p.m. CST at the Wyndham Grand Chicago Riverfront. Don will bring to life the data discovered from the survey to share with attendees the top challenges for the mobile channel, fraud risk by channel, and more, including:

• Where merchants have made progress in the fight against fraud, and where they still have vulnerabilities
• Current and future mobile revenue share
• Market segments that are leading the way in mobile support
• Mobile channel fraud prevention tools and services