The gross merchandise transaction value of mobile payments for physical goods will exceed $170bn worldwide by 2015, according to a new report by Juniper Research.
According to the report, this is nearly three times more than the $60bn forecast for 2011.
The upsurge in retail apps in the wake of the consumer smartphone explosion had fuelled the initial growth.
However, there was an increasing industry awareness of the need to enable an integrated shopping experience within the wider context of a fast expanding e-Commerce market, thus enabling seamless access to retail sites across multiple devices.
Juniper senior analyst David Snow said the report underlined the importance of mobile as an extra channel to market, but Juniper believes that mobile campaigns must be tightly linked to print, online and store based campaigns to ensure consistency of customer experience.
"Increasingly people will browse on one device such as a PC and then buy from another such as a smartphone," Snow said.
The Juniper report, however, advises that vendors need to innovate unceasingly as the market develops and becomes more competitive.
The market will gain further momentum in the medium term following the increasing deployment of POS (point of sale) offerings to facilitate in-store cashless transactions, and retailers have observed a marked uplift in average transaction value when cash is replaced by a mobile payment method.
