BY AMANDA SMITH
Great Scott! The mobile payments DeLorean has finally reached the future, and it is landing with a resounding bang. In what is anticipated to be the breakout year for the technology, these strategies will help your credit union streamline adoption of digital wallet and Buy button transactions.
Industry experts agree that after years of discussion and much speculation the mobile payments market is finally taking off. In fact, according to eMarketer.com, the U.S. market is expected to triple this year to $27.05 billion, up from $8.71 billion in 2015. And the research firm reports that the number of people making proximity payments will increase by 61.8 percent to more than 37.5 million. Consider also a recent Gartner, Inc. report predicting that by 2017, mobile commerce revenue in the U.S. will account for 50 percent of all U.S. digital commerce revenue.
While consumers and merchants have been relatively slow to adopt mobile payments until now, we are starting to see the numbers tick upward. So,2016 may just be a breakout year for the technology.
Legacy Systems Putting U.S. Behind
Todate the U.S. has lagged a bit behind some nations in terms of mobile payment adoption, partly because of our economy’s reliance on legacy systems that were put in place years before mobile even existed.
Interestingly, some of the fastest adopters of the technology have been regions such as Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Because their emerging economies are not hindered by legacy systems, they have been able to leap frog into the future with infrastructure that is purpose-built for mobile.
However,the USAleads the world in terms of non-cash payments. We are quite accustomed to using our cards instead of cash. As mobile payment technology becomes more readily available on smartphones and at merchant sites, we expect consumers to embrace it.
