Will that be cash or tablet?

Mobile payments are on the rise. In fact, according to a recent report from European payment processor Adyen, mobile payments made up nearly 20 percent of all transactions worldwide in December 2013, a 55-percent increase from the 13-percent share measured in December 2012. Two billion of Adyen’s 14 billion transactions were made via mobile.

Adyen’s data indicates tablets and smartphones ended the year with almost equal shares of the global mobile transaction volume. In the U.S., tablets held a significant advantage over smartphones on both Thanksgiving / Black Friday and Cyber Monday. On Cyber Monday, tablets made up 12 percent of all online sales, more than twice the share of smartphones.

Adyen measured both volume and value of mobile payments in five industry verticals: travel, digital goods, gaming, retail and ticketing. The researchers found that for all verticals except retail, smartphone payments outweighed tablet payments in volume. However, tablets had a far higher average transaction value than smartphones and even PCs in the majority of cases.

Adoption of mobile devices for payments increased across all sectors. Travel has seen an annual increase of 22 percent, passing every other vertical with a nearly 30 percent share of all transactions made by smartphone or tablet.

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