Many digital wallet fears

Mobile wallets have a lot of sweet-talking to do before they can get into consumers’ pockets.

Paying for stuff with your smartphone gives consumers the willies. Of the people who are familiar with the service but don’t plan to adopt it, 72 percent say security is their biggest concern, according to a new report from Chadwick Martin Bailey, a market research firm.

Identity theft concerns 70 percent of these holdouts, and 59 percent of them report that losing their phone and having their information stolen as a result keeps them from adopting mobile wallets.

Businesses would like to see more mobile-wallet adoption (transactions totaled $12 billion in 2012), since providers charge lower fees for transactions than credit-card companies do, the study’s authors explain.