Worldwide mobile payment users will surpass 141.1 million in 2011,
a 38.2 percent increase from 2010, when mobile payment users
reached 102.1 million, according to Gartner. Worldwide mobile
payment volume is forecast to total USD 86.1 billion, up 75.9
percent from 2010 volume of USD 48.9 billion.
Despite these strong growth projections, Gartner analysts said the
mobile payment market is growing slower than expected.
"In developed markets, companies are trumpeting the prospects of
Near Field Communication (NFC) without realizing the complexity of
the service model. We believe mass market adoption of NFC payments
is at least four years away," said Sandy Shen, research director at
Gartner. "The biggest hurdle is the need to change user behavior by
convincing consumers to pay with mobile phones instead of cash and
cards."
Gartner expects Short Message Service (SMS) and Unstructured
Supplementary Service Data (USSD) to remain the dominant access
technologies in developing markets due to the constraints of mobile
phones. Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) will remain the
preferred mobile access technology in developed markets, where the
mobile Internet is commonly available and activated on the phone.
Mobile app downloads and mobile commerce are the main drivers of
WAP payments, and WAP will account for almost 90 percent of all
mobile transactions in North America and about 70 percent in
Western Europe in 2011.
Money transfers and prepaid top-ups will drive transaction volumes
in developing markets. These are seen as the "killer apps" in
developing markets, where people value the convenience of sending
money to relatives and topping up mobile accounts. This is most
obvious in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, where these
two services will account for 54 percent and 32 percent of all
transactions in 2011.
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