MasterCard is predicting that by 2018, the use of smartphones and tablets for purchasing will be widespread.
MasterCard has just released its latest predictions regarding mobile payments, which have shown that it believes that the market will become mainstream by the year 2018.
Not coincidentally, this announcement coincided with the unveiling of its new MasterPass product.
The new MasterCard MasterPass mobile payments product will be launching later on in 2013 and will allow consumers to tap, touch, and click their smartphones in order to complete transactions to make purchases. This service also supports NFC technology, tags, QR codes, and other forms of checkout within a brick and mortar shop.
MasterCard is hoping that this will help to move past the struggle mobile payments has seen until now.
Jorn Lambert, the MasterCard Europe group head for emerging payments, has stated that the hope is that after years of experiencing false starts, the habits of consumers are now changing, meaning that this year will be the start of mobile payments truly gong mainstream. He explained that “For me, the train has left the station on this. Consumer behaviour around tagging and the like is becoming more and more mainstream.”
He has been a part of the development of the mobile payments service which is predicted to be launched later this year. He explained that the company’s data is indicating that within three to five years, this will be one of the methods that consumers will expect to have available to them for making payments. He said that this will occur with or without the credit card giant, so it is vital for that company to launch this MasterPass product.
Lambert also revealed that he felt strongly about the rumors that have long been circulating about the first steps that Apple and Google will be making into the mobile payments market in Europe, and that this will be important to speeding up the pace of adoption by consumers. He stated that he would be very surprised if either of those companies chose to create its own acceptance brand and created the structures for managing the risk in the credit ecosystem that are currently developed by the industry itself.
However, he is hopeful that they will move forward with mobile payments as this will be an important catalyst.
