Rapid growth in mobile ticketing, Near Field Communication  and purchases of physical goods will help drive up the volume of mobile payments, which are expected to total $670 billion by 2015, according to Juniper Research.

A new report about mobile payments from Juniper reveals that all mobile segments will exhibit two to three times growth over the next five years. As a result, the gross merchandise value of all purchases via mobile will grow significantly from the $240 billion expected in mobile payments this year.

“The big news for merchants is that the opportunity for selling their goods by the mobile channel is growing rapidly,” said David Snow, senior analyst at Juniper Research, Hampshire, Britain.

“We see the market at least doubling to trebling between now and 2015,” he said. “However, this growth will only be realized if consumers are captured and incentivized by innovative retail marketing initiatives and good user experiences.

“For NFC – the segment which grows the fastest –  there must be the investment by merchants in compatible point-of-sale equipment.”

Emerging segments drive growth
Growth in mobile payments will also be driven by consumers in both developed and developing countries increasingly using their mobile devices for everyday transactions, according to Juniper’s new Mobile Payments Strategies report.

Emerging segments such as physical goods payments, NFC and money transfers will fuel market growth by a factor of 2.7 times by 2015, according to Juniper.

The volume of digital goods mobile transactions, which make up the largest segment, is forecast to more than double.

“Within the digital goods segment there is significant growth, particularly in ticketing and specifically in the airline industry and the whole market is maturing,” Mr. Snow said.

“Nevertheless there is still a vast potential to tap,” he said. “User familiarity and acceptance of digital goods payment and delivery is high.This confidence now needs to be built in the physical goods category where there are currently lower levels of familiarity and the preference is still to shop in-store on online.”

Wide appeal
As NFC launches pick up and consumers increasingly look to mobile for payments solutions, the number of active mobile money users will double by 2013.

The Juniper report also reveals that approximately 20 countries are expected to launch NFC services in the next 18 months.

The need for financial access in developing countries will help drive the number of active mobile users and transaction values.
However, the top three regions for mobile payments  – the Far East and China, Western Europe and North America –  will represent 75 percent of the global mobile payment gross transaction value by 2015, according to the report.

“All mobile payments segments are increasing steadily on a global basis although certain regions, such as North America and Western Europe are growing faster than the Far East and China, but simply because the latter started earlier,” Mr. Snow said. 

“Clearly big names, such as Google, entering recently with its mobile wallet will affect the market but there are many financial and mobile telecoms companies that have been working in this area for some years already that have contributed to the growth of the market,” he said.

“Success cannot be attributed to single players as many players across multiple sectors have to cooperate to make a payments service successful.”