Juniper Forecasts Major Growth for LATAM Mobile Financial Services Market

Juniper Research has released a new report that suggests that the Mobile Financial Services (MFS) market is set to explode in the next few years. The firm predicts that the total transaction value of the market will climb from $580 billion in 2019 to more than $1 trillion by 2024.

The expansion of the Latin American market is expected to fuel much of that growth, with Juniper predicting that the number of MFS users in Latin America will grow 20 percent annually for the next five years. The total number of users is projected to reach 1.2 billion globally, roughly half of which (600 million) will be located in Africa and the Middle East.

Based on the findings, Juniper concludes that providers of financial services should be looking to expand into Latin America, and to improve the quality of traditional banking services on mobile devices.

The findings are somewhat at odds with a previous Juniper report that warned about the declining prospects for mPayment platforms like Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, although they are in keeping with a separate report that argued that mobile biometrics will become an increasingly integral part of the economy. Juniper has also predicted that 2 billion people would be using mobile banking services by 2022.