This just in: Juniper Research has determined that the total value of mobile payments for digital and physical goods, money transfers and NFC transactions will reach $670bn by 2015, up from $240bn this year.
Juniper’s new Mobile Payment Strategies report says that this growth will be driven by the rapid adoption of mobile ticketing, NFC contactless payments, physical goods purchases and money transfers as people in both developed and developing countries use their devices for everyday transactions.
Some 20 countries are expected to launch NFC services in the next 18 months, resulting in transactions approaching $50 billion worldwide by 2014. Meanwhile the need for financial access in developing countries is such that active mobile money users will double by 2013 and drive transaction values accordingly.
Senior analyst David Snow explained: “Our analysis shows that emerging segments such as physical goods payments, NFC and money transfers will fuel market growth by a factor of 2.7 times by 2015. Digital goods is the largest segment and, although forecast to more than double, it is not growing as quickly as some of the newer segments.”
This time a year ago, Juniper was forecasting that the value of digital and physical goods that people buy with their mobiles would reach $200bn globally by 2012. Now it is stating that that market will reach $240 billion by the end of 2011 – although the latter figure includes money transfers, which the previous forecast did not.
A couple of weeks ago, Juniper stated that it thinks contactless transactions will reach $50 billion by 2014, a number it repeats in this overall payments forecast, no doubt driven by the fact that it also thinks 1 in 5 users will have registered for mobile money services by 2013.
Other key messages from the most recent report include:
• The top 3 regions for mobile payments (Far East & China, W. Europe and N. America) will represent 75% of the global mobile payment gross transaction value by 2015.
• Digital goods payments will account for nearly 40% of the market in 2015.
The study provides the big picture of mobile payments, providing forecasts of the main market segments of digital and physical goods purchases, contactless NFC and domestic and international money transfers and remittances, providing regional forecasts of gross transaction values.