Retail News Update

The gross merchandise transaction value of mobile payments for physical goods will exceed $170 billion worldwide by 2015, according to a new report just released by Juniper Research Entitled ‘Mobile Payments for Digital & Physical Goods – Analysis, Markets & Vendor Strategies 2011-2015′, it forecasts that this will be nearly treble the $60 billion predicted for 2011. Significantly the report says that initial growth in mobile payments has been fuelled by a dramatic upsurge in retail apps in the wake of the consumer smartphone explosion. The sort of iPhone and Android apps plus mobile-friendly web sites that GoMo News has frequently covered in the past. The report cautions, however, that vendors still need to innovate unceasingly as the market develops and becomes more competitive.‘Our research for this report underlined the importance of mobile as an extra channel to market,” David Snow, a senior analyst with Juniper Research, observed.

“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,” he added.

The report found that there was an increasing awareness in the industry of the need to enable an integrated shopping experience within the wider context of a fast expanding e-commerce market.

Other key findings from the research are that the market will gain further momentum in the medium term following the increasing deployment of POS (point of sale) solutions to facilitate in-store [NFC-style] cashless transactions.

It also identified a major industry benefit – namely that retailers have discovered a marked uplift in average transaction value when cash is replaced by a mobile payment method.

In the report there are of some 17 mobile payments vendors and offers guidance for readers to pinpoint their strategies.