Global mobile wallet spending is on track to grow nearly 32% in 2017 to reach $1.35 trillion, a new study from Juniper Research predicts.
Although at the moment transactions are concentrated in China and East Asia, the research firm predicts that brands such as PayPal and Apple wallets which can be used both instore and online means that wallets will increasingly become the default payment mechanism in other markets.
The study found that mobile spend is currently concentrated in China and East Asia owing to the success of Alipay and WeChat.
The report claims that PayPal’s choice to use a HCE (Host Card Emulation) NFC solution to enable POS payments is a key disruptive moment in the wallet wars. It also attributes Paypal’s future mobile wallet success to the on-going success of its social payments subsidiary Venmo.
Research author Dr. Windsor Holden noted that “Network operators remain wedded to offline payments based on an NFC SIM card, at a time when more agile competitors are deploying integrated HCE wallets that also enable online usage.”