- Phone payments are currently available to Citadele clients with both Android devices and iPhones using Apple Pay.
- Although the most popular method of paying is still payment cards, 14% of the public use their phone or other wearable device—watch or wristband—for everyday purchases.
- Citadele clients have access to the widest range of payment options in the Baltics: card, wristband, Apple Pay, Android app, sticker and payments to phone numbers.
Although payments using mobile phones and other devices appeared in Latvia relatively recently, a survey reveals that 14% of the public already uses this method of payment regularly. Phone and other wearable device payments are now available from Citadele with both Android and iPhone devices.
While it was only possible to pay with cash or card in shops a few years ago, Citadele clients now have access to six different payment methods: card payments, contactless wristband or sticker payments, phone payments using Apple Pay or the bank app for Android phones, as well as payments to phone numbers.
“The six different payment methods have not been developed for the sake of having more, but rather with the aim of ensuring that each client has a way of using their money which is most convenient and accessible for them. We observed that habits are slowly changing, and clients are starting to use phone payments as their main payment method more often, which is why we developed the opportunity for iPhone users to also pay using their phone—this opportunity was previously only available to Android users. We are grateful to the payment solution developers D8 Corporation who were once again wonderful collaboration partners,” explains Head of Cards and Payments at Citadele Andris Lazdiņš.
The survey undertaken by Citadele shows that the most eagerly-anticipated digital finance updates in the past few years have been the confirmation of payments using fingerprints and a digital wallet offering an overview of transactions in all of a client’s accounts including from different banks. For Apple Pay users, this function is partially fulfilled by the Wallet app, to which users can add several cards, including cards from different banks.
The survey was undertaken in February 2020 in collaboration with the Norstat data collection agency, surveying 1010 members of the public online.