Mobile payments globally will account for US$1 trillion in value in 2017, up 124% from 2015’s estimate under US$500 million, predicts IDC.
IDC's new report says that Asia-Pacific markets will contribute to this growth greatly as mobile commerce (or mCommerce) transactions with remote payments take off across the region.
Driven by a high number of initiatives and diverse mobile commerce maturity level, Asia-Pacific is expected to lead the world in mobile payment (or mPayments) developments.
IDC believes that the strongest growth for mPayments will be driven in part by rising levels of mCommerce as emerging nations come online for the first time and witness an internet boom via Smartphones.
Furthermore, the limited state of credit/debit card adoption in Asia/Pacific will force potential mPayments behavior to shift to using bank account inked mobile wallets.
“Smartphone adoption has grown much more rapidly than general banking and card adoption in the Asia-Pacific region,” said Shiv Putcha, associate research director at IDC Asia/Pacific.
Putcha notes that the recent focus on financial inclusion policies in various countries have given a boost to connecting the unbanked. This phenomenon, coupled with the innovation of semi-closed wallet schemes linked to bank accounts, has given a major boost to mobile payments in Asia-Pacific.
"When we look across the region, we see a duality between the mature Asian markets like Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore versus the emerging Asian economies like China, India and Indonesia,” adds Putcha.
Putcha adds that the mature markets exhibit strong levels of banking and card adoption and will tread a similar path as mature Western economies have for mobile payments, with a focus on proximity solutions based on Near Field Communications (NFC). These will be fertile markets for solutions like Apple Pay and Android Pay.