Mobile wallets have become one of the most effective tools in a business’s digital toolkit and their value goes far beyond payments. In 2025, companies are using Apple Wallet and Google Wallet to deliver loyalty cards, event tickets, credentials, and promotions directly to customers’ phones, triggered at the right time and place.
If you’re still thinking of wallets as just tap-to-pay, you’re missing what they’ve really become, direct, real-time engagement channels that drive higher conversions, stronger retention, and lower operational costs.
Why Are Mobile Wallets Becoming More Popular?
Mobile wallets have evolved from simple payment tools into dynamic platforms for access, identity, and real-time engagement. Today, Apple Wallet and Google Wallet act as centralized digital hubs, holding everything from boarding passes and loyalty cards to event tickets, special offers, and even government-issued IDs.
This shift has made mobile wallets everyday essentials, not just tap-to-pay conveniences. By 2026, more than 5.2 billion people worldwide are expected to use them, driven by growing demand for features like digital credentials, travel IDs, and integrated loyalty programs.
According to ACI Worldwide, usage of mobile wallets for non-payment purposes has surged 92% since 2019, highlighting a clear shift in consumer behavior. As functionality expands and standards improve, forward-thinking brands are leveraging wallets as persistent engagement tools, offering timely, relevant experiences without the need for an app download or login.
Not sure how mobile wallets work? Our guide on What Is a Mobile Wallet covers the basics. For a closer look at the platforms leading this shift, see Apple Wallet vs Google Wallet.
How Are People Using Mobile Wallets Today?
Consumers increasingly turn to mobile wallets for instant, app-free access to essentials, concert tickets, boarding passes, loyalty points, and personalized offers all delivered straight to the lock screen. At checkout, over 60% of shoppers now use wallet-based loyalty cards, while digital boarding passes are standard among frequent travelers.
More significantly, mobile wallets are becoming trusted tools for digital identity and credentials. With the ability to store verified documents like driver’s licenses and travel IDs, consumers are treating their wallets as secure, portable ID systems.
A 2024 McKinsey study found that 74% of U.S. consumers and 71% of European consumers report “easier and faster checkouts” as their primary reason for using mobile wallets, clear proof that digital passes and in‑wallet engagement are now fundamental user expectations.
As consumer adoption continues to surge, the real question for businesses isn’t whether to embrace mobile wallets, it’s how to maximize their value. Let’s break down the specific ways mobile wallets are driving measurable impact in 2025.
What Are the Benefits of Mobile Wallets?
Mobile wallets offer a range of benefits that make it easier to pay, store digital passes, and manage everyday transactions for both consumers and businesses. Lets take a look at the top 9 main benefits of using a mobile wallet:
1. Convenience
Mobile wallets give users direct, instant access to everything they need payments, tickets, ID cards, and loyalty programs without switching between apps or carrying physical items. Content lives on the lock screen, works offline, and requires no additional downloads or logins. Wallet passes are searchable, scannable, and persistent, making them more accessible than email attachments or app-based features.
According to a PYMNTS study, 55% of digital wallet users cite convenience as their primary reason for adoption outpacing rewards, speed, or security. For businesses, this behavior shift means less friction, fewer abandoned checkouts, and greater on-device visibility.
2. Increased Security
Mobile wallets are built with layered security designed to prevent fraud, data breaches, and unauthorized access. Transactions are protected through tokenization, replacing card or credential data with dynamic, single-use codes. All data stored or transmitted is encrypted, and wallet access is restricted by biometric authentication or passcodes at the device level.
Security is managed jointly by the device OS, wallet provider (such as Apple or Google), and integrated banking systems. These wallets operate within secure environments, often leveraging trusted execution environments (TEEs) or secure elements (SEs) to isolate sensitive operations. Compliance with standards like EMVCo and ISO/IEC 27001 ensures consistency in protection across regions.
Visa reports tokenized transactions reduce fraud by 30%, and over 81% of US consumers view biometric payment methods as more secure, with 70% preferring face or fingerprint unlock, reinforcing why mobile wallets rely so heavily on device-level authentication .
3. Contactless Payments
Contactless payments through mobile wallets rely on near-field communication (NFC) and QR code scanning to initiate and authorize digital transactions from smartphones. This allows users to pay in physical and digital environments without inserting a card or entering data manually.
In 2024, 49% of U.S. smartphone users used proximity-based mobile payments such as Apple Pay and Google Wallet, up from 40% in 2022. Apple Pay alone processed 1.8 billion transactions in 2024, a 40% year-over-year increase, and accounted for 14% of all online consumer payment volume.
4. Real-Time Updates
Mobile wallets use background synchronization, location-based triggers, and time-sensitive rules to push real-time updates to digital passes. These updates automatically modify event times, travel details, loyalty balances, or promotional content without requiring user input.
This drives higher engagement:
- 69% of consumers are more likely to use a loyalty pass that updates in real time.
- 73% would join a program that shows live points or offers on their phone.
Real-time updates turn mobile wallets into live, high-attention channels that deliver relevant content exactly when it matters.
5. Integrated Loyalty & Rewards
Mobile wallets connect directly to loyalty programs, allowing customers to store digital membership cards, view rewards, and redeem offers without switching between apps or scanning physical cards. Rewards and status levels update automatically, and appear at checkout or on the lock screen, reducing friction and increasing visibility.
A recent PYMNTS Intelligence study found that 33.6% of mobile wallet users cited rewards as a primary reason for usage. Meanwhile, Augeo Marketing reports that 61% of consumers want to manage multiple loyalty programs through a single wallet even though only 21% of brands currently offer this functionality.
6. Improved Customer Experience
Mobile wallets deliver personalized, app-free access to services, enabling users to pay, show tickets, and manage loyalty. As a result, overall user satisfaction is rising, 48% of U.S. consumers say they’ve used a digital wallet in the past 90 days, and satisfaction scores for these wallets have improved year-over-year, rising from 660 to 664 on J.D. Power’s 1,000-point scale.
By matching consumer expectations for speed, convenience, and integrated experiences, mobile wallets streamline the customer journey and strengthen brand loyalty.
7. Data-Driven Insights
Mobile wallets provide first‑party data on how and when users interact with digital passes, capturing metrics like opens, redemptions, time-based engagement, and location-triggered use. Brands can use these insights to refine targeting, optimize promotions, and measure outcomes directly at the point of engagement.
Research shows that omnichannel campaigns, which integrate mobile wallet interactions alongside email, SMS, and in-app messaging, see nearly 3× higher engagement rates and 90% stronger retention than single-channel efforts
This illustrates the power of integrating wallet-level data into broader marketing strategies.
8. Cost Savings
Mobile wallets reduce operational costs by replacing printed assets like paper coupons, plastic loyalty cards, and physical tickets with digital versions that live on a user’s phone. This shift cuts down on production, shipping, and inventory costs. Because digital passes update in real time, businesses also avoid reprinting costs when details change. It’s faster and cheaper to launch promotions, manage loyalty tiers, and push updates compared to traditional methods.
On the payments side, mobile wallets help businesses spend less on infrastructure and transaction processing. Integrating wallets with POS systems often means fewer third-party fees and faster throughput at checkout. Less time spent handling cash, printing receipts, or resolving manual errors results in lower staffing and support costs. For high-volume or multi-location businesses, these small efficiencies add up fast.
9. Speed & Efficiency
Mobile wallets speed up payments by enabling tap-and-go checkouts, reducing wait times and improving the overall customer experience. Whether in-store, online, or in-app, they remove the need to handle cash, insert cards, or fill in payment details. This not only shortens lines and minimizes drop-off but also helps businesses serve more customers in less time.
Major retailers like Target reported a 23% reduction in checkout time when customers used mobile wallets, with a corresponding 31% lift in average spend. Among small businesses, 79% say the main reason they adopted mobile wallets is speed. For both merchants and consumers, efficiency is now central to the digital payment experience.
Why Mobile Wallet Marketing Outperforms Traditional Channels
Mobile wallet marketing outperforms traditional channels like email, SMS, and branded apps because it reaches users in a more immediate, persistent, and frictionless way.
Unlike emails that get lost in crowded inboxes or push notifications that require opt-ins, wallet passes sit on the user’s device, often visible right on the lock screen. They update in real time, support geo-targeting, and don’t require users to open an app or click through a message to take action.
Engagement rates reflect this difference: wallet passes consistently see higher open and retention rates than email and app-based campaigns. There’s no app download barrier, no login friction, and no need for frequent reminders. It’s a channel users opt into once, but interact with many times.
For more tactical guidance, see our full article on Mobile Wallet Marketing and how it stacks up across the funnel.
What Are the Risks of Mobile Wallets?
While mobile wallets offer major advantages for engagement, data, and cost-efficiency, businesses still need to consider the potential risks. These include issues of device dependency, user privacy, platform support, and user understanding. Below, we break down the most relevant concerns and how they’re being addressed by leading wallet platforms.
Device Loss and Backup
A common concern is what happens if a customer loses their device. Because mobile wallets are device-based, a lost or stolen phone could theoretically expose access to payment methods, passes, or credentials. However, both Apple Wallet and Google Wallet are deeply integrated with biometric security (Face ID, fingerprint) and PIN protections. Wallet data is never accessible without authenticating at the device level.
Even if a device is lost, passes are backed up to iCloud or Google accounts and can be restored automatically when users log into a new device. Apple’s “Find My” and Google’s “Find My Device” also allow remote locking and wiping, protecting wallet data from unauthorized access. In short, device loss is a risk but one that’s highly contained within secure ecosystem controls.
Privacy, Data, and User Consent
Mobile wallets store passes that often include personal information names, loyalty numbers, event bookings, or even health data. Understandably, users and brands are concerned about how this data is handled. The good news is that wallet data stays on the user’s device, encrypted and protected by the OS. Passes don’t track users in the background or expose sensitive data to businesses unless users engage directly (e.g., scanning a pass or using it at checkout).
From a business standpoint, this makes compliance easier. You’re not collecting or storing personally identifiable information (PII) by default. What you get is engagement-level data (opens, redemptions, triggers), which is valuable but low-risk. In an era where data privacy regulation is tightening globally (GDPR, CCPA), wallets are a privacy-friendly channel that doesn’t require deep consent infrastructure.
Merchant Support and Fragmentation
Some businesses worry that supporting mobile wallets means dealing with two separate ecosystems, Apple Wallet and Google Wallet, each with its own file formats, rules, and behaviors. While this was once a valid challenge, modern platforms (e.g. mobile wallet CMS tools) now allow brands to create a single pass and distribute it across both platforms, handling device detection and formatting automatically.
As of 2025, Apple and Google Wallet cover over 95% of smartphones globally, so you don’t need to worry about niche compatibility gaps. Adoption across payment terminals and POS systems is also nearly universal for NFC, and scannable wallet passes are readable by any standard barcode scanner. Fragmentation still exists at the platform level, but for most use cases, it’s already been solved.
User Education and Awareness
Mobile wallets still aren’t fully understood by all consumer segments especially older or less tech-savvy audiences. Some users don’t realize they can store non-payment items like loyalty cards, event passes, or coupons in their wallet app. Others don’t know how to add a pass from an email, website, or QR code.
However, this is improving quickly. Wallet usage has grown rapidly since 2020, and over 70% of Gen Z and Millennial consumers now use wallets weekly for both payments and digital credentials. More brands are also integrating “Add to Wallet” buttons into their emails, checkouts, and confirmation pages, making it easy for users to engage without needing to understand the tech behind it.
Apple and Google have also added clearer UI and onboarding flows within their wallet apps, helping users understand what’s stored and how to use it. As adoption continues, education will become less of a barrier and early adopters can help set the standard.
The Future of Mobile Wallets
Mobile wallets are evolving into all-in-one digital hubs for identity, credentials, loyalty programs, and financial services, centralizing key interactions and access points in a single, secure place.
In 2025, the global mobile wallet market is expected to reach roughly USD 350 billion, growing at a 27–31% CAGR through 2030–2035 as NFC use, biometric security, QR-based payments, and AI-backed fraud detection accelerate their adoption
Regional adoption trends show Asia‑Pacific leads driving growth in both retail wallet spending and real-time payments while North America and Europe rapidly catch up. Meanwhile, innovative ecosystems are integrating digital IDs, mobile driver’s licenses, transit passes, car keys, and health passes directly into wallet apps, blurring the lines between finance, identity, and access
Technological breakthroughs will define the next era. Expect AI-based authentication, biometric passkeys, zero-knowledge age checks, and blockchain-backed credential sharing to become standard. Google Wallet is already rolling out digital ID via Zero Knowledge Proof for age verification, and Apple and Google continue integrating secure identity credentials into their platforms.
