Business executives believe the use of a mobile phone or
a device to make payments or conduct banking transactions will require four
years to become widely accepted by consumers, according to a global survey of
business executives by KPMG International.
83 percent of the respondents believe that mobile payments will be mainstream
within four years, compared to only nine percent who see them as mainstream
today. In fact, 46 percent believe mobile payments will be mainstream
within two years.
We believe that exploding smartphone growth and myriad opportunities will grow
mobile payments at a much faster rate than our respondents anticipate,” said
Gary Matuszak, KPMG Global Chair of the Technology, Communication and
Entertainment practice. A wide variety of payments is ready for
adoption, as several key players already provide or are rolling out mobile
payments, and interest among consumers in utilizing mobile payments is growing,
in line with the industry’s readiness to deploy them.”
Seventy-two percent of the executives said that mobile payments are now or will
be reasonably important in the future, with specialist online systems building
on its leading position as a payment method, and m-banking and near field
communication (NFC) gaining significantly greater traction than today. Fifty-eight percent said they have a mobile payments strategy in place.
While there is consensus about the significant value of this opportunity among
executives across geographies and industries, the type and size of opportunity
varies between developed and developing countries depending on depth and reach
of the financial infrastructure in place. We believe that those firms
willing to engage in cross-industry partnerships and co-opetition are more
likely to succeed and dominate the market due to the complex set of business
relationships required to deliver mobile payments to a mass market,” Matuszak
added.
While the majority of the business leaders surveyed
believe consumers are currently concerned about security and privacy when using
mobile devices, they believe other factors are more compelling attributes of a
successful mobile payment strategy. Specifically, 81 percent believe
convenience/accessibility is the highest attribute, followed by simplicity/ease
of use, at 73 percent, security, at 57 percent, and low cost, at 43
percent.
At the same time, business leaders, globally, view
security as the main challenge to developing mobile payments strategies.
Technology and adoption of the technology is a distant second, followed by
privacy.
The survey reinforces our view that the availability of mobile payment
services is not only beneficial to the consumer but also to service providers”
said Kunal Pande, director – KPMG Advisory Services. Consumer convenience and
perception of security will be key for adoption of mobile payments in India.”
One surprising result of our survey is the absence of
divergent views across both industries and geographies, which speaks to the
consensus that mobile payment is regarded as an opportunity for players across
the value chain of commerce,” Matuszak added.
With the mobile payments industry poised to make a major leap in the coming
years, several players are expected to play significant roles, though two
groups of financial institutions are the current front-runners, say
respondents. Banks, which scored the highest in level of importance in the
value chain, and credit card companies will have the most important roles,
according to business leaders globally.
They placed telecommunications companies third, ahead of specialist online
payment players (e.g. PayPal, Boku, Obopay), online service provider giants
(e.g. Google, Facebook, Amazon), retailers and technology companies. Among U.S.
respondents, online service provider giants placed third, followed by
specialist online payment players and telecommunications companies, which were
rated of equal importance, retailers and technology companies.
By TelecomLead.com Team
editor@telecomlead.com
