Most of today's tech trends are fueled by behaviors exhibited by the millennial generation. The emergence of social media, the transition from traditional land lines to mobile communication and, most recently, cable cutting, have primarily gained popularity because of millennials. Now, they are the main demographic leading another major tech trend -- mobile payments.
Today, virtually everyone born in the last 20 years of the 20th century owns a mobile phone. In most cases, those phones have upgraded from the traditional Nokia "brick" that was seemingly everywhere in the early 2000s to a flip phone and finally to a smartphone, which dominate the mobile space in 2014. Millennials have taken advantage of the evolving functionality of their gadgets by using them for just about every task, including paying for items.
There are many forms of mobile commerce, but this particularly case refers to using devices to send money to friends or merchants via a mobile application. This was detailed in a recent Bloomberg article that discussed the rise of mobile payments.
"Millennials, people born from the early 1980s to the early 2000s, have been flocking to these technologies, drawn by their ease of use and social features," writes Jing Cao, the article's author. "After downloading a mobile-payment app onto a smartphone, users can connect them to bank and credit-card accounts, and then link up with friends to send and receive money on-the-go."
The Bloomberg piece specifically refers to Venmo, an increasingly popular mobile application used to manage payments. It's referred to as a great way to allow friends to borrow money or pay them back, in addition to the numerous opportunities it presents shoppers and traditional merchants.
Merchants must be mindful of this trend and the group behind its rapid emergence. Whether Venmo becomes the face of mobile payments remains to be seen, but the rise of apps like Venmo does speak to the larger issue of millennials driving the mobile commerce trends. Merchant service providers can help organizations make sure they are equipped for these types of transactions.