How mobile payments will transform the shopping experience
We’ve heard it before…this is going to be the year that mobile payments will boom! Both Gartner and Forrester have made strong predictions of mobile growth, with Forrester recently saying that the US mobile payments market will hit US$90bn by 2017, a 48 per cent compound annual growth rate from the $12.8bn spent in 2012.
But how do we know that 2013 is really the year that ‘mobile wallets’ will finally take off? And what will things look like when mobile payments actually fulfill their promise?
4 indicators of mobile payment success
Here are four indicators from players across the ecosystem that suggest we will see a global shift in mobile payments this year:
- A survey of 200 mobile industry executives, developers and insiders conducted by Chetan Sharma Consulting voted mobile payments the top mobile applications and services category for 2013. The survey said mobile payments and commerce will get big in 2013, with Visa, the banks and more established online payment companies like PayPal well positioned to cause disruption in the mobile payments space.
- Visa Europe claims that in 2013, there will be 40 issuers offering mobile contactless payment services to consumers, and by the end of 2013 around 80 types of smartphones will be certified to carry out contactless payments.
- A study performed by Shop.org and Forrester research, called the ‘State of Retailing’ found that mobile payments will be essential if retailers wish to remain competitive. 51 per cent of the participating retailers said that their top priority in 2013 had to do with optimisation, including mobile payments.
- China is set to follow US and Asia-Pacific countries to embrace a cashless society as it taps a boom in ecommerce and electronic payments, with mobile payments likely to soar 52.7 per cent annually in 2013. Mobile payments are likely to expand to $17bn in 2013.
