Mobile trumps all this holiday season

With the holiday season ahead, new payment forecasts are showing consumers reaching for their phone for their holiday shopping needs.

New data from payments company Billtrust reveals that 51% of respondents plan to purchase a majority of their gifts with their smartphone this holiday season. Billtrust surveyed over 1,000 American consumers.

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Millennials are a majority of that demographic, with 57% of them expecting to conduct most of their holiday shopping through mobile. But older generations are assimilating too, with 40% of those 54 or older expecting to also purchase a majority of their gifts via smartphone.

The gift of giving is also evolving away from checks and toward peer-to-peer payment platforms. The days of opening up a card to find a check are fading, only to be replaced with a notification on a smartphone from an app like Venmo, where more consumers are gifting monetary amounts. In fact, 29% of consumers plan to gift money through Venmo this year. One in four respondents prefer to receive money as a gift on a P2P platform.

The digital wallet is also being reached for this time of year with nearly 60% of American consumers expecting to use it to purchase gifts. Furthermore, about one out of three people expect to use mobile payments and digital wallets more during this holiday season compared to the same time last year.

Total retail sales are projected to jump between 4.5% to 5% this year, up from 3.1% in 2018, according to Deloitte's annual holiday study.

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