Researchers measured people’s spending before and after adopting mobile phone payments and discovered an interesting pattern. Not only does it affect a person’s credit debt, but it has likely increased the total credit card debt of the US population alone by $50 billion.

The study was conducted by Yuqian Xu, Anindya Guoshe and Binqing Xiaona on clients of one of the Chinese banks. Judging by the results, the ease of payment via a mobile phone “forces” some people to spend an average of 9.4% more when paying for purchases or services online and offline. Moreover, we are talking about a comparison not with cash, but with a plastic card.

This is explained by the convenience and speed of making payments using a smartphone. Researchers claim that it takes about 40 seconds to pay with a plastic card, while a smartphone allows you to complete a purchase in 30 seconds. In addition, you can forget your wallet at home, but almost no one goes outside without a phone. All this together leads to people buying more and more often.

Yuqian Xu, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School and lead author of the study, said spending more may have contributed to people’s credit card debt. In his opinion, the ease of payment with a smartphone provides 4.5% of the turnover of credit funds through “plastic”. If you compare this number with the total credit card debt in the United States, mobile payments are to blame for its increase by $50 billion.