Paypal mobile e-commerce event Photo:e27

In an industry thought-leadership event yesterday, Paypal announced some statistics from its mobile commerce study conducted by The Nielson Company:

1. The mobile commerce market in Singapore saw phenomenal growth from S$43 million in 2010 to S$328 million in 2011, representing more than a 660 per cent jump in just one year.
2. Mobile shopping comprised about a quarter (23%) of all online shopping in 2011, nearly six times its share (4%) of the online shopping market in 2010.
3. Mobile shoppers constituted close to half (48%) of all online shoppers in 2011, compared to about one in three (29%) in 2010
4. Singaporeans spent S$244 million through their smartphones in 2011 – representing close to three-quarters of the total mobile commerce market – compared to S$82 million through tablets. However, the average spend per head on tablets was S$380, significantly higher than the average spend per head on smartphones, which amounted to S$274.

The results of the mobile commerce study are staggering and show how quickly shopping and paying on mobile devices have taken off in Singapore. “As we had predicted, 2011 was a blockbuster year for mobile commerce in Singapore. Retailers are waking up to the fact that they need to offer ‘anytime, anywhere’ mobile shopping experiences for their customers. At PayPal, we are offering safer, faster mobile payments in as little as two clicks to Singaporean consumers that use our digital wallet, while bringing new mobile payment innovation to Singapore such as our QR code shopping at selected MRT stations,” says Elias Ghanem, managing director of PayPal Southeast Asia and India.

On top of the high growth rate, the study also explored the various mobile shopping barriers for consumers and found that security concerns and lack of user-friendliness are the two major barriers for Singaporean consumers. The research highlighted that 40 per cent of all mobile shoppers felt that mobile transactions were not safe enough. Other barriers to further adoption of smartphones for mobile shopping included “screen size is too small” and “Internet speed is slow.”