A recent survey finds that many consumers want more opportunities to use mobile wallets in-store while online mobile commerce transactions continue to grow as well. Meanwhile several industry and investment analysts are predicting strong years for companies well positioned in the mobile payments market, along with large growth for mobile payments in general.
According to a survey of U.S. smartphone owners from ad agency Moosylvania, 44 percent would like to be able to use a mobile wallet for in-store purchases. But consumers are also shopping online from their mobile devices as only 12.7 percent of smartphone owners surveyed had never made a purchase from their device while half of respondents made a purchase between one hundred and one thousand dollars and 27 percent have made a purchase of less than one hundred dollars. This survey not only indicates that the majority of smartphone owners in the U.S. have made purchases from their devices, but also that around half of smartphone owners are confident and comfortable enough to make larger purchases in the hundreds of dollars from their mobile devices.
But mobile commerce growth is certainly not limited to the United States. A recent forecast from IDC Financial Insights predicted that the worldwide purchase volume from mobile devices will surpass $1 trillion by 2017 along with forecasted rapid growth for NFC spurred by upgrades in mobile devices and POS terminals. Although, according to the estimates two-thirds of the mobile commerce volume will be online/m-commerce transactions while one quarter of the total mobile volume would come from NFC.
In the near term several companies are expected to benefit from the increasing mobile transaction volume. Equity market analysts are predicting a strong year for eBay as mobile initiatives with PayPal are expected to increase the company’s total revenues. It is estimated that the online payments giant processed $10 billion in mobile payments for 2012 while the eBay mobile app now has over 100 million downloads.
Much of the growth in mobile commerce results from consumers engaging more with the mobile channel in general, and these changes are reflected in market outlooks and reports. Facebook mobile ad revenue will surpass desktop ad revenue by 2014 according to a forecast from Merrill Lynch, indicating decreased use of Facebook from a PC in favor of increased access from mobile devices. In turn, the increased mobile ads and impressions will lead to more purchases in the mobile channel.
Overall the mobile channel is expected to continue strong global growth in 2013 and onward, eventually topping $1 trillion by 2017. We are starting to see stronger signs of growth in the mobile channel, such as familiarity with mobile commerce among smartphone owners and the shifting of advertising revenue to the mobile channel for a major internet company. But not all predictions for mobile commerce are positive, as a recent report from ThreatMetrix listing the top the top cyber-security trends for 2013 warns that volume and payments in the mobile channel grows, so will the fraud risks.
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