Even though consumers increasingly trust nonbanks such as Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. with their personal information, they trust credit card providers more.
In fact, the popular social media phenomenon Facebook ranked last among companies consumers would trust to support mobile payments in an Ogilvy & Mather's online mobile-shopper survey of 500 U.S. consumers, says Gareth Evan, director of digital at its Ogilvy Action unit. The marketing communications firm conducted the survey in June.
"When we talked to consumers as well as brand manufacturers, vendors and retailers, we started to see themes come out, and one of them was trust in new services being offered," says Evan.
Consumers trust the card companies more because they have been providing secure payments online for many years, says Evan. Consumer trust will develop for future mobile-payment applications, including smartphones that make contactless payments, as more players work to develop security standards the same way they did for credit cards, he says.
Visa Inc. topped the survey list, with 39.5% of respondents saying they trust the brand more than other companies. MasterCard Inc. was second with 35.9%, and American Express Co. ranked third with 35.8%.
Facebook, however, was last on the trust list in Ogilvy's survey with only 12.1% of participants saying they trust the brand. Though Facebook has its own payments system for its website, it is unclear whether the company will pursue mobile payments as part of its offerings.
"An element of surprise was how far behind Facebook was," Evans says. "But in terms of issues they have around privacy, it seems to play out that consumers had to consider if they really wanted to put financial information into that mix."
The other surprise was that eBay Inc. also ranked so low, despite the fact that eBay has developed a solid mobile platform for shopping, Evan says.
However, eBay-owned PayPal ranked fourth, just after the credit card companies.
As of June 30, PayPal's active account total rose 15% from a year earlier, to 100.3 million. The unit's net total payments volume rose 34.7%, to $28.7 billion.
