Worldwide mobile payment users will exceed 108.6 million in 2010, an increase of 54.5% compared to 70.2 million users in 2009, and total mobile payment users will represent 2.1% of all mobile users, according to a report from IT research and advisory firm Gartner.
Sandy Shen, research director at Gartner, said: "We continue to see strong growth in developing markets in Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa for mobile payment, while adoption in North America and Western Europe lags behind due to the plentiful choices of payment instruments that consumers have,"
"Developing markets have found the right formula for mobile money services – functions that users want and an ecosystem that can sustain the service."
According to the report, mobile payment users in Asia/Pacific will surpass 62.8 million in 2010 and will represent 2.6 percent of all mobile users. In Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), mobile payment users will total 27.1 million, representing 2.1 percent of all mobile users in the region, while mobile payment users in North America will total 3.5 million, accounting for 1.1% of all mobile users in the region.
The firm said that the demand for mobile payment in developing markets is being driven by the unbanked and underbanked populations not having ready access to the banking infrastructure or PC, while at the same time regulators in early-adopter markets are tightening up policies to provide better user protection and fight against unlawful financial activities relating to money transfer.
Short Message Service (SMS) remains the dominant mobile payment technology due to its ease of use for both consumers in developing and developed markets, while wireless application protocol/web can support either downloadable clients or mobile browsers, which are more frequently used by consumers in developed markets, Gartner said.
Ms Shen added: "The answer for developed markets, however, remains elusive. The offerings for developed markets will take a different format. Instead of a point offering for mobile payment, the service needs to be built on top of the existing payment behavior and infrastructure so that users can choose any channel – retail, phone, online or mobile – that suits their context at the moment of payment."
