A new report from Juniper Research expects the gross merchandise transaction value of mobile payments for physical goods to exceed $170 billion (around £110 billion) worldwide by 2015. That’s almost three times this year’s forecast of $60 billion.
The report says an increase in retail apps and smartphone adoption fuelled the initial growth, although retailers have also become aware of the need to enable an integrated shopping experience across multiple devices.
David Snow, senior analyst at Juniper Research, said “Our research for this report underlined the importance of mobile as an extra channel to market, but Juniper believes that mobile campaigns must be tightly linked to print, online and store based campaigns to ensure consistency of customer experience. Increasingly people will browse on one device such as a PC and then buy from another such as a smartphone.”
Further growth in mobile payments for physical goods is expected as cashless point-of-sale solutions are introduced in-store. Retailers have also noticed an increase in the average transaction value when cash is replaced by a mobile payment.
[Whitepaper; report]