The digital commerce market is on track to grow from $4.9 trillion in 2015 to just over $8 trillion by 2020, Juniper Research estimates.
In a report, the research firm said the significant growth in transaction values is a result of the contributions from three major commerce segments - digital banking, remote digital goods, and remote physical goods.
“The digital commerce market as a whole is seeing an ever increasing propensity towards an omnichannel approach, and this extends to e-commerce where the mobile and tablet platform is seeing increased use towards the purchasing of physical goods, either for delivery or collection," research author Lauren Foye said.
The research also found that global online banking users as a proportion of banked individuals are forecast to cross the 50% mark in 2016. Meanwhile, online retail events such as Cyber Monday have been credited with boosting online platform incomes, and 2015 was no exception, with many retailers turning record profits.
China’s own Black Friday event known as ‘Singles' Day’ reportedly saw e-commerce giant Alibaba sell $14.3 billion in goods.
Juniper said digital transaction volumes would be further bolstered with the continued transition to digital formats and the rise in streamed subscription services.
Meanwhile, the use of mobile devices to make monetary transfers such as international remittances is expected to have a considerable lead over other market sectors by 2020.
The research found that in China, both WeChat and Alipay saw astonishing spikes in P2P (Person to Person) traffic in February 2015. WeChat registered more than 3.3 billion P2P ‘red envelope’ transactions in just 6 days over the Chinese New Year period.