M-payment for digital and physical goods to exceed $300bn within five years

A new analysis of the m-payments opportunity forecasts that the gross transaction value of payments made via mobile phone for digital goods (such as music, tickets and games) and physical goods (typically gifts and books) will exceed $300bn globally by 2013.

Juniper validated its m-payments forecast against independent estimates of global personal consumption spend ($21trn in 2007): these estimates mean that Juniper's m-payments forecast will represent around 1% of this spend by 2013.

A region by region analysis found that there is a significant and immediate opportunity for m-payment services, systems, software and supporting services to underpin the processing of this value of payment transactions by 2013. With applications and service case studies, the study explores how the mobile is developing into a payment tool that will be used by more and more people, more and more often in future.

Report author Howard Wilcox notes: "Merchants in North America and Western Europe are just starting to realise the potential of a mobile web presence as a fourth channel to market. Retailers should be evaluating the benefits of the mobile web, and be mindful of the success of regular e-commerce sites in generating sales. They need to move quickly to exploit the opportunity presented, and ensure that they maintain ease of use for their customers who are already familiar with web shopping from their PCs."

Highlights from the report include:
• Global annual gross transaction value will grow over 5 times by 2013.
• The ticketing segment will be driven by consumer usage on rail, air and bus networks as well as sports and entertainment events. This will represent over 40% of the global transaction value by 2013.
• The top 2 regions (Far East and W. Europe) will represent over 60% of the $300bn p.a. global mobile payment gross transaction value by 2013 for digital and physical goods.
• Western Europe is currently dominated by digital goods and services sold via SMS, whereas the Far East and China region (specifically Japan) is already well established in physical goods sales over the mobile web, and has been for a number of years.