Update: 11:03AM WALLETS carrying credit cards, train tickets and loyalty cards could soon be a thing of the past.
As Australians become more tech-savvy experts believe they will soon ditch leather and migrate even further away from using cards and cash.
New research from CommBank shows that as contactless card and smartphone payments continue to increase, three in four Australians (73 per cent) expect mobile wallets to replace their wallet by 2021.
The banks executive general manager of cards and payments, Angus Sullivan, said the ease of condensing cards and cash all onto a mobile phone would make transactions far easier.
Theres a range of functionalities you get with a phone and an e-wallet, he said.
People really have an affinity to their phones … theres been a real marked shift in customers behaviour around smartphone behaviours in the last three or four years.
Having the ability to use your phone to pay includes having your loyalty cards in there … you could have your transport tickets, too, which could be loaded into an app and used for payment on public transport.
The research found Australians expected mobile wallets to have multiple purposes and not just be used for payments and mobile banking.
They predicted it would also be used to access loyalty schemes (55 per cent), redeeming coupons (45 per cent), storing receipts (44 per cent) and paying for public transport (43 per cent).
Latest data from strategic relations firm RFi showed a distinct shift away from customers using cash and instead opting to pay by plastic.
Australians withdrew about $16.1 billion in March 2009 from ATMs, cashout counters and credit card cash advances, compared with $15.3 billion in December last year.
RFi director Alan Shields said Australians use of such methods, including contactless payments, had continued to soar.
We are getting more comfortable with tap and go type payments where we dont enter a PIN and we use contactless technology on our cards, he said.
The first people to use contactless payments are the first people to use mobile wallets.
But Mr Shields said there would always be a need for Australians to use cash.
