eMarketer has reduced its forecasts for the use and value of these transactions this year and onward.
Even as the mobile payments industry continues to insist that it is on the cusp of a massive explosion in use, eMarketer has slashed its growth estimates in half for the remainder of the year.
In October 2012, the firm had predicted that the market would reach the $2.12 billion mark this year.
However, in their latest report, which was only just released, it has reduced that figure to $1 billion, instead. Between 2011 and 2012, mobile payments had experienced a tripling in its transactions. However, eMarketers’ initial growth estimates have now been scaled back considerably as it witnesses an ever larger number of issues in the way of the adoption of these transactions.
Mobile payments struggles continue in the form of adoption problems, delays and a “congested landscape”.
One of the primary factors contributing to the slow adoption of mobile payments is the companies within that industry. There are a tremendous number of players, each of which have their own competing technologies. This lack of a standard or a universal format is causing both consumers and businesses to feel confused about the industry as a whole and is leading them to hesitate before even considering adopting its use.
eMarketer now feels that it will take until 2016 for mobile payments transactions to reach the $20 billion level. This is a full year longer than their previous forecast. At that rate, however, it could still mean that by the end of 2017, it may be able to reach $58 billion, which is certainly nothing to laugh at.
It should be noted that while adoption isn’t exploding as many predictions had thought, mobile payments remains and extremely hot space at the moment. The chance to redefine the way that people pay for the products and services that they purchase is a tremendous opportunity for startups, big tech companies, and large financial institutions alike. It is the first time that this kind of opportunity has opened up since debit cards joined credit cards as being highly popular forms of plastic transaction at a point of sale.
The financial institutions are hoping to work together so that smartphone transactions can take on credit card systems.
Six of the biggest banks in Poland have announced that they will be working together in order to create a common standard for mobile payments which would result in a system that could place the dominance of traditional credit card giants at risk.
They are hoping that this will knock the wind out of Visa and MasterCard that currently lead the way in the country.
The banks that are involved in this partnership include Bank Zachodni WBK, Bank Millennium, ING Bank Śląski, Alior Bank, PKO Bank Polsk, and BRE Bank. As a group, the banks working toward this mobile payments system make up 70 percent of the electronic banking market in Poland. They will be working to come up with the standard under the Polish regulator in this sector.
The mobile payments offering will be based on the IKO app from PKO Bank, which was just launched in March.
The mobile payments system will allow consumers in Poland to be able to complete purchase transactions while in stores, and will be able to make withdrawals from ATMs by entering a unique code that the app has generated. Consumers will also be able to use the app to send money to recipients simply by entering in their smartphone number in a way that has been compared to the UK’s Barklays Pingit service.
The use of this mobile payments system allows consumers to be able to make electronic transactions without the requirement of a credit card. This was a fact that Visa was “not happy about,” according to Wojciech Bolanowsky, from PKO.
At the same time, Boguslaw Kott, the CEO of Bank Millennium, has admitted quite openly that one of the purposes of the bank group in creating this mobile payments system is to challenge the rein of Visa and MasterCard. Kott was quoted to say that “This will be a more competitive system compared to the credit card system. The credit card system will probably be put under a question mark in the future.”
