According to the 2010 Asia-Pacific Mobile Payments Outlook study, released by market research company Frost and Sullivan, the increasing adoption of mobile payments in the region will be driven mainly by technology innovations and operators’ initiatives, particularly in the NFC (Near Field Communication) field, as well as by rising consumer demand in both developed and emerging economies.
The study’s findings point out that the relatively less-developed mobile markets such as China, India, Indonesia and the Philippines, where access to traditional banking services is hindered for the rural mass population, are showing rapid take-up of mobile banking services, including person-to-person (P2P) transfers and remittances.
According to the same source, contactless payments enabled via the NFC channel are likely to increase in popularity in 18 Asia-Pacific countries including Japan, to account for 23 percent of m-payments volumes in 2015, from only 12 percent in 2009. Moreover, NFC is expected to gain ground in developed markets where mobile penetration rates and the use of smart cards for contactless payments are already high, the study highlights.
SMS-based mobile transactions, which accounted for nearly 82 percent of total transactions in 2009, will likely remain the dominant mobile payment channel until 2015, inspite of the fact that its market penetration is anticipated to drop to about 67 percent by then.
However, the adoption level of other payment channels such as WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) and DMB (Direct Mobile Billing) is not expected to rise through by 2015, since these services contributed in a small percentage to the growth of m-payments in 2009.
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