New report shows the number of users to use this form of mobile payments will almost triple by 2017.
A recent Juniper Research study indicates that there could be as many as 300 million consumers worldwide who will make mobile contactless payments by the year 2017, which is a huge increase from the slightly more than 110 million that utilized this mobile payment service in 2013.
Contactless card rollouts are gaining momentum in many countries across the globe.
According to the study, several markets may soon be adopting contactless payments for mobile due to the success and popularity of contactless debit and credit cards. In addition, the introduction of contactless cards also lead to an increase in Point of Sale (POS) terminals equipped with Near Field Communications (NFC). It has now become standard for leading POS vendors like Ingenico and VeriFone to ship most of their terminals with NFC.
However, the research director and author of the report, Windsor Holden, stated that stakeholders need to work on their efforts to increase awareness among consumers regarding mobile contactless payments. Furthermore, he said the value proposition also needs to be taught to retailers. Holden commented that contactless payment technology is mainly “being sold to retailers on the basis of faster throughput at the POS. The other critical opportunities offered by contactless – such as consumer engagement and product upselling – are much lower on their radar.”
The cost of mobile contactless payments cards is higher than plastic cards.
The Juniper study also noted that NFC rollouts have been held back due to the lack of a clear business model. Currently, it costs more to issue a mobile payment card than it does a plastic card.
In addition, it is likely that the mobile contactless payments market will receive a significant boost from the expected launch of Apple’s iWallet service. That being said, currently, it is not clear if extra POS upgrades will be necessary once the service is launched. Moreover, it has not been officially confirmed that Apple will be releasing a mobile payments service or that it will feature NFC technology. This isn’t the first time NFC rumors have been linked to Apple, but nothing has ever come of these rumors.
The expanding use of both smart phones and smart glasses are predicted to expand the use of the tech.
According to a recent report released by Juniper Research, there are an estimated 60 million people worldwide who use augmented reality applications on a regular basis.
This report also stated that this figure should jump to 200 million by the year 2018.
It was also noted in the report that augmented reality has the opportunity to take off from its current focus in the gaming and navigation environments and will expand into much greater everyday use purposes. The publication stated that “Initial innovations will stem from games, such as Google Ingress, but the technology will expand to include lifestyle and fitness apps.” It also added that there is a chance for “paradigm shifting utilization of AR within social media, potentially breaking the digital-physical wall with potential future uses allowing a digital representation of a person to appear in the users surroundings.”
By the year 2018, games and location based augmented reality will represent under half of the tech’s usage.
Juniper believes that by that time, augmented reality will have expanded greatly into areas such as healthcare and lifestyle. It could help with remote doctor visit experiences, as well as to help to enhance the remote shopping experience as well as that through social networks. It has also seen a potential future in enterprise, such as providing technical specs for aircraft mechanics and drawings to overlay on machinery for engineers to use for building new technologies.
Some companies have already started to use augmented reality for this type of project, such as SpaceX and Elon Musk, which use AR tech for designing new components for rockets. That said, the majority of apps that use this technology, such as Layar, provide content overlaid on paper to make it “come to life” with such elements as added data and video. It was pointed out that most of them are ad funded. Juniper also pointed out that there are a few pay-per-download and some that are freemium.
Equally, Juniper feels that the augmented reality industry will only benefit from the increasing dominance of Android, as it will help to improve AR’s current situation which is seen as rather buggy and fragmented.
