NFC will facilitate transactions valued at $74 billion by 2015 as NFC is increasingly used for the payment of goods in-store and as transport tickets, a new report said.
The report from Juniper Research also said the figure the increasing use of mobile devices as an alternative to credit cards and paper tickets is one of the fastest growing segments of the mobile commerce market.
Juniper said the report also showed that the rapid adoption of mobile devices for commerce-related applications is by no means limited to NFC. All segments – money transfers, banking, payments and coupons – are forecast to exhibit significant growth rates.
“Our report demonstrates the spectacular growth we see across all segments of the mobile commerce market. Four of these segments (money transfer, physical goods, NFC and coupons) will more than treble in transaction value over the next three years, whilst digital goods, banking and tickets will still on average, double over the same period,” said report author David Snow.
The Juniper report, however, stressed that mobile commerce providers need to keep security issues in mind. Even if there is a perceived, if not actual, security risk in the mind of users, not only the specific mobile commerce application, but also the whole mobile commerce market may be set back until user trust is recovered.
The report further said SMS is the key to widespread mobile banking service adoption. However, without interoperability mobile money transfer services will struggle to gain a critical mass of users, it added.