The mix of mobile purchasing is shifting, with consumers increasing their buying on smartphones faster than on tablets, at least when mobile apps are excluded. Smartphones accounted for 64.1% of all mobile device purchases made via a browser in Q2, up from 61.8% last quarter, according to a new Mobile Payments Index from payments vendor Adyen. The index does not track mobile app purchases.

The increasing size of smartphone screens is one reason why consumers are more comfortable buying on smartphones, says Kamran Zaki, president of North America, at Adyen, which processed more than $10 billion in online, mobile and in-store payments worldwide last year. Zaki attributes at least part of this tomany consumers nearly always  having their smartphones nearby, whereas they may leave their tablets at home.

“Smartphones are available all the time for shoppers, and (shoppers) can quickly make a purchase as the need arises,” Zaki says. “People generally use tablets at certain times of the day, for instance in the evenings after they get home from work.”

The shift is particularly evident when it comes to digital goods, such as hotel reservations, music downloads, club memberships and tickets. In those categories, smartphones account for 26% of online transactions and tablets 8%. When it comes to buying tangible merchandise, however, mobile shoppers still prefer to buy on tablets, as 19% of online transactions for physical goods are on tablets, compared to 12% on smartphones.

Mobile devices as a whole, tablets plus smartphones, account for 28.7% of global digital transactions, up from 27.2% in Q1, according to the payments provider. IPhones took the biggest share of mobile transactions at 35.6%, iPads took 28.5%, smartphones running Android 28.3%, Android tablets 7.4% and WindowsMobile 0.2%.

Average transaction values by device are: iPads $115, Android tablets $93, iPhones $82 and Android smartphones $75. Computers still have the highest transaction value at $121.

The U.K. is above the global average, as 44.8% of online payments in the UK were made on mobile devices. Apple Inc. expanded its mobile payment system Apple Pay to the U.K. a week ago, and is now available at 250,000 retail location in Britain.

 

Follow mobile business journalist April Dahlquist, associate editor, mobile, at Mobile Strategies 360, @Mobile360April

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