Spending on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers will overtake transactions made on desktops and laptops this year, according to a new study.
Juniper Research says a “significant proportion” of m-commerce purchases would previously have been carried out on desktops but are now migrating to the newer devices.
In its report, Digital Payment Strategies: Online, Mobile and Contactless 2014-19, it predicts that the annual global value of the different digital payment methods will hit $4.7 trillion by 2019, up from just over $2.5 trillion this year.
It says the largest increase in spending will come as shoppers buy physical goods remotely, while emerging markets such as China will also play their part. It points to China’s online marketplace Alibaba, which accounted for 20% of global business-to-consumer and consumer-to-consumer sales in 2013.
Streaming of on demand music and video services is also growing, as sales of DVDs and CDs fall.
The report also says contactless activity will be driven by card rather than mobile purchases. “While we are now seeing contactless transactions scaling up in markets such as Australia, Poland and the UK, almost all current consumer usage is via the card,” says report author
“However, with banks increasingly attracted to an NFC model in which they have full control of the customer, then we may well see some high profile deployments in the medium term.”
The study comes at the same time as Visa Europe’s Working Day Spend Report, which found 17m UK workers were frustrated by the inconvenience of cash payments. Some 23% were regularly caught out by not having enough cash on them to make a payment, while 30% had had to ask a taxi to stop so they could find a cash machine. But Sandra Alzetta, executive director at Visa Europe, said: “There’s no need for people to be frustrated by cash. You can already make contactless payments at more than 300,000 places in the UK – not just in retailers but also on London buses and taxis.”
