Mobile Payments and College Students

From Marketwired

An April poll of 2,503 college students around the country revealed that 42 percent would "probably not" or "definitely not" make more mobile payments if they were widely available.

The study, sponsored by Balance Innovations, showed that another 42 percent reported they would use their mobile phone "somewhat more, depending on the retailer or purchase." 16 percent of those surveyed said they absolutely would use mobile payments "all the time."

Its sounds like college students, the arbiters of all things cool with technology, have nearly completely dismissed mobile payments. Or, have they?

That's a pretty good number of respondents, but surveys are not the most reliable predictor of behavior. Not only that, you have to think about one more very important point... college students are, for the most part, continually broke. If you don't have much money because you don't have any income, why would mobile payments be attractive to you?

One other piece of evidence that calls into question this entire article is found at the bottom of the article:

Balance Innovations is the leading developer of reconciliation and cash office management solutions for the retail industry. Our solutions integrate seamlessly with existing POS technologies to simplify and improve retailers' cash office management operations.

So, the author of the study invests in integrations with legacy point of sale systems, most of whom won't adopt mobile payments for years. This study could be completely above board, but it seems a bit odd to me when a company that doesn't really stand to benefit from a new technology publishes a report panning that same technology.