BOSTON—Despite all the attention being paid to mobile banking and mobile payments, one person believes that there won’t be a dramatic increase in mobile usage within the next five years. PULSE Network President Dave Schneider spoke on a panel as part of NAFCU’s Annual Convention here, and he observed that not only is it extraordinarily hard to change consumer behavior, but consumers are especially slow to change behaviors when it comes to money.
“In the 1980s, the end of checks was around the corner—we were going paperless,” said Schneider. “The reality is that it takes time. When I say relatively small adoption in the next five years, I could easily see something on the order of 10%, which is not insignificant but it’s still not wholesale conversion to a new payment type.”
Schneider conceded that because PULSE is a payments network he has a vested interest in plastic, but he said that but the company has made inroads into mobile, too. He said that part of the delay in converting to mobile lies in the fact that infrastructure still has not caught up for mobile POS, and is not likely to do so in the next five years.
“Most everybody has a smart phone, and that’s obviously going to be the platform but that’s only half the equation,” he said. “You’ve still got to have places to use them, and that’s not syncing up as quickly as people thought.” The reason that’s not happening as quickly as expected, he said, is largely due to fragmentation in the market, along with regulatory concerns, the move to EMV in the cards space and other factors.”
While he wasn’t bullish on the speed at which the transition to mobile will happen, Schneider stressed that CUs still need to be thinking about the move toward mobile payments and lining up partners. “It’s coming—I just don’t believe it’s going to come as fast as some have said.”
