The country’s effort to go cashless has led to an unprecedented growth in smartphone digital payments.
A new study predicted that the Indian mobile wallet market will experience a growth rate of more than 190 percent by fiscal year 2022. The forecast was made as a result of research conducted by Assocham, a trade organization, and RNCOS, a business consulting firm.
The prediction was that mobile payment transactions are likely to reach a CAGR of over 160 percent per year.
That rate will continue to increase from the current fiscal year through to 2022. At that time, the mobile wallet market will be worth 250 billion, said the prediction. That is a substantial increase over the current size of the market which is estimated to be just over half a billion.
The report on the forecast suggested that there are several reasons that the use of mobile payments in India is growing exceptionally quickly. To start, e-commerce as a whole is on the rise. This is a trend occuring worldwide. Moreover, mobile internet penetration is also growing rapidly, meaning that more consumers have access to these options than ever before.
That said, the mobile wallet market is rising faster in India than in most other areas of the world.
With rising smartphone penetration, the Indian environment is also aligning well for mobile wallet use in a way that is not being experienced in other areas of the globe. For one thing, there is an increase in disposable incomes. More people have money to spend on areas outside of vital essentials.
With all these factors combined with the country’s efforts to reduce the use of cash, people are turning to their phones to pay for products and services. This is, after all, a country that is greatly unbanked and in which it is not necessarily commonplace to have credit cards. Therefore, when cash is not an option, people are turning to the option they already have in their hands: mobile phones.
This has created a nearly ideal opportunity for mobile wallet market growth and it appears as though this will continue for at least another five years.
StoreHippo CEO Rajiv Kumar believes that 2015 will be the year in which mobile commerce comes into its own. Increasing Internet and smartphone penetration is having a major impact on the way consumers shop. Retailers that adapt to changing market trends are more likely to find success among mobile consumers. Those that refuse to become mobile friendly may find it more difficult to compete with other retailers and could face obsolescence in the coming years.