Mobile payments have reached a tipping point. Increasing smartphone ownership, the proliferation of mobile wallets and increased consumer awareness means that 2013 will be the year mobile payments lose their novelty status and begin to be widely adopted by consumers. But who will profit from mobile payments – and how – will remain unclear for all involved says Gareth Ellis, ACI Worldwide.
It’s been 15 years since the first mobile payment was made in Finland when a consumer sent an SMS message from their phone to a vending machine to pay for a soft drink . Yet for a decade and a half, mobile payments have struggled to make an impact among consumers with some estimates showing just 8 per cent are currently using a mobile wallet or NFC on their smartphone .
But now more than ever we seem to be at a tipping point with everything working in the favour of mobile payments. For example, in the UK smartphones are now owned by 57.6 per cent of the population and according to research from Aite Group, globally 24 per cent of people can be categorised as ‘Smartphonatics’ – consumers who change their shopping, financial, and payment behaviour as a result
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