Feb 03, 2016
A new estimate for the global mobile payments market has high hopes for the mobile payments ecosystem. And it comes with a $650 billion figure.
A new report from global market research firm TrendForce suggests that, by the end of 2016, the total estimated revenue for the market worldwide could hit $620 billion. This is a massive increase of 37.8 percent from 2015 figures, which the firm said clocked in at $450 billion.
“Service charges from banks, telecom operators and third-party payment platforms constitute an enormous business opportunity in the mobile payment market,” said Kelly Hsieh, senior manager for mobile communication and end device research at TrendForce. “However, hardware and software developers also have significant roles in the industry.”
The major shift in the mobile pay market has, of course, come with the emergence of new players and new services. And, according to the firm, the “rapid diversification of mobile payment services” has led to the acceleration of the marketplace, built by newcomers across multiple industries.
This is particularly true in China, which has set the tone for mobile payments with its smartphone-driven consumer base that’s generally been more accepting to new technologies than U.S. consumers. And, of course, Apple has been working for much of the past year to get its piece of the mobile payments pie in China.
“For instance, the takeoff of the mobile payment has led to the rapid market growth of fingerprint sensor chips. Since Alibaba’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Payment incorporated fingerprint recognition into their payment verification processes, the number of smartphones that come with a fingerprint scanner has risen. In fact, this biometric technology is now a standard feature in most mainstream smartphone models. We can expect over 40 percent of the smartphones worldwide will be able to read fingerprints by the end of this year,” Hsieh added.
Outside of the financial and tech companies vying for more market share in the global mobile payments market, major retailers, like Walmart and Target, have shared their ambitions to join the space with their own mobile wallets. And that’s on top of the battle between the tech, banking and finance spaces to see who can carve out the best mobile payments ecosystem niche.
Source: PYMNTS.com