Mobile banking, commerce to hit $3.2T in 4 years

MANILA, Philippines - The value of mobile commerce transactions conducted via mobile handsets and tablets will exceed $3.2 trillion by 2017, up from $1.5 trillion this year, according to Juniper Research. The increasing popularity of mobile devices for bill payment is reflected in the fact that the mobile banking sector accounts for the lion’s share of transaction values over the next five years. However, to put global mCommerce into context, total financial transactions in the US alone exceeded $4.4 trillion in 2012. Furthermore, it observed that the introduction of mobile wallet services was providing first time financial access in many emerging markets where the proportion of un-banked adults exceeded 50 percent. In the same markets, partnerships between storefronts and network operators – enabling payment via carrier billing – were enabling greater access to the digital economy. The report also pointed out that lengthy POS (point-of-sale) infrastructure replacement lifecycles were hampering near field contact (NFC) deployments in both the retail and transport sectors, with players understandably reluctant to upgrade infrastructure without a demonstrable return on investment.