Apple and Samsung are expected to bolster smartphone contactless payments awareness in the coming years, while the annual transaction value of online, mobile and contactless payments will jump 20 per cent this year, Juniper Research has found.According to Juniper, digital payments will reach US$3.6 trillion this year, up from US$3 trillion in 2015.
The research found that the surge in contactless payments will continue, “fuelled by further scaling up of infrastructure rollout and increased card payment limits in key markets”.
While cards are anticipated to account for 90 per cent of contactless payments over the next five years, the deployment of NFC payments by the likes of “high-profile players such as Apple and Samsung would increase consumer awareness and usage of smartphones to fulfil transactions”.
The research has additionally pointed to the growing presence of social media companies in the e-Retail space.
Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram have introduced “buy” buttons, allowing users to make purchases directly from the companies’ mobile apps, Juniper notes.
Social media activity will also increasingly extend into the person-to-person (P2P) payments space, the research found, citing the example of WeChat in China, which Juniper states saw more than 32 billion “red envelope” monetary gifts sent in a six-day period in February.
“Facebook has already rolled out a P2P service linked to its Messenger service in the US, and we would expect additional deployments in other core markets over the next year or so,” research author Dr Windsor Holden commented.
