Consumers need to be sold on benefits of mobile payments

The way people have been talking about near field communication, digital wallets and carrier billing, you'd think consumers were ready to embrace mobile payments. But Consumer Reports thinks consumers may not be that excited yet about paying for goods with their phones, nor should they be.

The consumer advocacy organization highlighted transaction problems and fees when warning about potential hurdles standing in the way for mobile payments. Consumer Reports said only 5 percent of recent survey respondents had used their cell phone to pay for day-to-day purchases in the previous month, and only 10 percent had billed a purchase to their home or cell phone account. The low usage number isn't completely surprising, given that mobile payments are still quite new to most people, but it underscores the challenges ahead in getting consumers to opt-in to the tech. Many are open to the idea, but there needs to be a good case for ease of use and added flexibility. Payment processes like near field communication require new hardware purchases and some changes in behavior. The challenge for Google , the carrier consortium Isis and others pursuing NFC payments will be to convince consumers that it’s clearly a better option than swiping a card, which is pretty familiar and easy for people.