Retail event will highlight the promising future of the mobile payments space

One of the retail industry’s major conventions is coming to New York and mobile payments may be one of the highlights of the event. The National Retail Federation will be hosting the event, as usual, and the organization suggests that mobile payments may be a significant focus of many companies attending the event. Retailers have become more interested in the mobile space over the past few years, largely due to growing smartphone penetration. In order to better engage consumers, these companies have become very supportive of mobile commerce.

Rewards program may encourage consumers to make use of new payment services

The mobile payments space is still quite young, but it is growing quickly. A growing number of retailers have begun to find that engaging mobile consumers with new payment services has been successful. In order to continue finding success, however, retailers will have to add value to their mobile offerings. Approximately 78% of consumers noted that they would make use of mobile payments services more often if they had access to some sort of rewards program through these services.

Security remains a major concern for consumers

Many consumers have shown favor for mobile payments because of the convenience that it represents. The problem, however, is security. Consumers have fears that their financial and personal information may be at risk if they were to use a mobile payment service. Retailers have been targeted in the past by those wishing to exploit consumer information, with some malicious groups focusing on mobile channels.

Retailers will have to take risks to find success in the mobile payments space

Retailers will have to find ways to ensure that consumer information is protected in order to find success in the mobile payments space. They will also have to find ways to add value to existing mobile payments services. Loyalty programs may be the best way to accomplish this, as consumers have shown great favor for these programs. The mobile payments space may thrive as a result of greater security and more valuable features being offered by retailers.

The massively populated country has proven to be a very promising marketplace for smartphone wallets.

A new forecast has been issued with regards to the use of mobile payments in India and in which it has now been estimated that the considerable growth rate of the use of these transactions in the country may translate to $183 million by 2019.

In only three years, the market will be set to undergo a massive transformation that will lead to significant growth.

The smartphone ecosystem in India has been producing some very exciting movements as these devices catch on and start to cut into the feature phone share in a population that is more than one billion large. As this technology takes off, the online and mobile payments space has also been benefiting with wallet apps being downloaded at a staggering rate. Tech companies have been placing their focus on major economies around the world with release such as Apple Pay, Android Pay, Samsung Pay and Alipay, but India’s offerings have been somewhat limited, so far.

There are about 12 major mobile payments players offering wallet apps within the country.

Among the most popular mobile wallets currently available to smartphone users in India are M-Pesa, Paytm, Oxigen, MobiKwik, Freecharge, Citrus Pay, Airtel Money, mRupee, ItzCash and Zaakpay. Currently, the combined total of their active customer base is estimated to be around just over 125 million people. Paytm currently claims a massive 50 million of that total.

The results of a recent study conducted by RNCOS, a consultancy and research firm, showed that the current mobile wallet marketplace size in India is worth an estimated $53 million. That said, it has also predicted that within the next three years, that figure will skyrocket to $183 million, before the close of 2019.

That represents tremendous growth for mobile payments use, particularly when taking into consideration the fact that 38 percent of transactions in India are still completed with cash. Another 30 percent of the total market is taken up by bill payments and recharge accounts. At the moment, the primary obstacle faced within that marketplace has to do with the stability of the wireless data infrastructure, having their connection drop mid-transaction, while also worrying whether or not this technology is keeping their financial and other sensitive data secure.