COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - Juniper Research, the UK market analysis firm that has been bullish on mobile payments markets, predicted a tenfold increase by 2013 on transactions and goods purchased using Near-Field Communications in mobile platforms.
The company's Mobile Payments Markets: Strategies & Forecasts 2008-2013 cites a gross figure of $600 billion in 2013 for all items purchased and money transferred using mobile payments. Today, markets are dominated by digital goods such as music and ringtones, the report said, but the real prospects are based on NFC, a short-range RFID technology intended for embedding in mobile phones for contactless payments.
Howard Wilcox, author of the Juniper report, said that the mobile phone will function as a virtual wallet by 2013, a trend that will expand from developed nations to developing-nation markets. The top three regions for mobile payments - Far East and China, Western Europe, and North America - will represent more than 70 percent of global mobile money transfer gross transaction value by 2013, the report predicted.
A May 2008 report from EE Times Market Intelligence Unit cautioned that rapid growth of NFC payments still requires a better coordination of payments infrastructure from a client-server perspective, including better support for Trusted Services Manager functionality.
