If they’re not doing so already, service providers better start paying attention to the growing mobile-payments market.
Juniper Research has just released a new report that predicts people worldwide will use mobile devices to make $170 billion in purchases by 2015. That’s nearly triple what’s predicted for 2011 ($60 billion).
The research firm says initial growth in this space was fueled by a big upsurge in retail apps when smartphones exploded onto the scene. Now there is an increasing industry awareness of the need to let customers have an integrated shopping experience as the eCommerce market continues to expand rapidly.
“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," said Juniper Senior Analyst David Snow. “Increasingly people will browse on one device such as a PC and then buy from another such as a smartphone."
The report goes on to say that vendors need to continue to innovate as the market develops and becomes more competitive. It also finds that the market will keep growing over the next few years as more POS (point of sale) solutions are deployed, facilitating in-store, cashless transactions; and customers are spending more money on average when they use mobile payments when compared to cash.
