Informa Telecoms and Media, a London-based research company, is predicting that the day the cell phones replace wallets is drawing closer. Its latest forecast, Mobile Payments and Banking, predicts that by 2013 some 300 billion transactions totaling $860 billion will be made by mobile phone. Yet, in that same time frame, NFC will still only be a minor player in the mobile payments marketplace.
Informa predicts that by 2013, more than 445 million mobile subscribers will be regularly using their mobile phones to purchase physical goods and services remotely. Informa estimates that of the total value of mobile payments and transactions in 2008–around U.S. $71 billion–about a third was spent on purchases of mobile digital content such as ring tones, games and music tracks, but by 2013 over 95% of mobile transactions will be for physical goods and services.
Most of this will happen without NFC, which, the report says, will be held back by the lack of NFC-enabled handsets. Informa forecasts that by 2013 approximately 11% of all mobile handsets shipped will be NFC-equipped and that more than 178 million mobile subscribers will be regularly using mobile NFC phones to buy physical goods and services, such as tickets, locally at the point of sale.
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