Global mobile payment market to hit $620bn in 2016

TrendForce
UPWARDLY MOBILE: TrendForce forecasts major mobile payments growth (Click to enlarge)

Consumers worldwide will use their mobile phones to spend a total of US$620bn on all forms of mobile transaction this year, representing a 37.8% year-on-year growth from $450bn in 2015, research from Taiwan-based analyst firm TrendForce reveals. By 2017, total mobile payment volumes will reach $780bn, climbing to $930bn in 2018 and $1.08tn in 2019.

TrendForce defined mobile payments for the study as “transfer of funds initiated using a mobile phone,” the company told NFC World. “We mean all mobile payments.”

“Apple Pay and Samsung Pay especially have been scrambling to China, which makes up a huge slice of the mobile payment market,” the firm says. “Hence, Chinese iPhone and Samsung phone users will be able to make mobile payments this year, provided that their models are of the latest generation with upgraded software.”

“Service charges from banks, telecom operators and third-party payment platforms constitute an enormous business opportunity in the mobile payment market,” says Kelly Hsieh, TrendForce’s senior manager for mobile communication and end device research.

“However, hardware and software developers also have significant roles in the industry. For instance, the take off 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% of the smartphones worldwide will be able to read fingerprints by the end of this year.”

 

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