15% of all retail purchases—defined as purchases of physical goods—are made using mobile devices, according to new analysis based on transactions processed by payments vendor Adyen. The payments provider, which processed more than $10 billion in online, mobile and point-of-sale payments worldwide last year, says mobile payments are on the rise.

Tablets account for two-thirds of global retail transactions, with smartphones making up the other third.

Adyen notes that the retail sector has experienced perhaps the biggest impact from what it calls “sofa shopping,” that is, shoppers transacting on mobile devices while at home.

Adyen suggests retailers develop specific applications or responsive sites for tablets, to make it easier for a shopper to enter his payment information on a tablet. A site that uses responsive design uses one set of web content and one code base to create a single site that renders differently to fit the screens of desktops, tablets, smartphones and other web-enabled devices.

Mobile transactions accounted for 13.8% of all transactions processed by Adyen in April, up from 8.2% in June 2012.

The research also finds that Europe led the world in April with 15.3% of all transactions made using a mobile device, followed by Asia (12.4%) and North America (11.2%).

Ayden also says that as of April, tablets (both Apple Inc.’s iPad and those running on Google Inc.’s Android operating system) accounted for more than half (53%) of total global mobile payments, up from 48% in June 2012.

The iPad is the dominant platform for mobile transactions around the world. The device accounted for 6.6% of total worldwide transactions in April, up from 3.6% in June 2012.

IPhone purchases accounted for 4.4% of total transactions, up from 3.1% in June 2012. Transactions stemming from Android phones nearly doubled from 1.1% to 2%, while use of Android tablets more than doubled from 0.3% to 0.7% of total transactions. 0.1% of transactions are made on other, unspecified mobile devices.

“The report points to an overwhelming consumer appetite for transacting on mobile devices, in particular on tablets such as the iPad,” says Roelant Prins, chief commerce officer for Adyen. “Mobile transactions now account for nearly 14% of all transactions we process globally, and our analysis suggests that this will continue to rise.”

The Adyen Global Mobile Payments Index is published quarterly and based on Adyen’s global payment transaction data.

Ayden says it canprocess 227 payment methods, 187 transaction currencies and 14 settlement currencies across six continents. Adyen clients include Getty Images and Vodafone.

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