2012 will be a banner year for mobile payment transactions, according to a new report and corresponding projections from Gartner.
Worldwide mobile payment transaction values will likely blow past $171.5 billion in 2012, which amounts to a 61.9 percent increase from 2011 values of $105.9 billion.
Gartner says the number of mobile payment users will also swell to reach 212.2 million this year, which is up significantly from 160.5 million in 2011.
“We expect global mobile transaction volume and value to average 42 percent annual growth between 2011 and 2016, and we are forecasting a market worth $617 billion with 448 million users by 2016,” said Sandy Shen, research director at Gartner. “This will bring opportunities for service and solution providers who will need to cater to the local demand patterns to customize their offerings.”
The mobile payments market will experience fragmented services and solutions for the next two years. Technology providers will have to cater their solutions to the local market that will be using different access technologies, business models and partners, and under different regulatory conditions.
“There will be a few global players that have the scale and resources to serve large customers and the mass market whose requirements can be readily satisfied by standard solutions,” Shen concludes. “However, there will always be segments that cannot be sufficiently served by the global players. The demand of these segments can only be satisfied by specialized or local players who can better understand the segment and have specific solutions to meet the unique challenges.”