Juniper Research Goes Bearish on mPayments in New Report

“The window of opportunity in the US for mobile payment providers like Apple Pay and Google Pay is closing fast,” writes Juniper Research in a new report on the mPayments market.

Assessing the results of a survey of over a thousand smartphone users across the US and the UK, Juniper Research finds dismaying trends for the likes of Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and Google Pay. Only 14 percent of respondents in the US said that they currently use a mobile payments platform, while the emergence of contactless payment cards is poised to displace the advantages of mobile payments.

As report author James Moar explains, “Many of mobile payment’s benefits, like increased transaction speed, are not exclusive to smartphones, and our survey shows that the majority of users who have not adopted OEM-Pay are more interested in services like contactless cards than mobile-based payments.”

The findings starkly contrast those of another report from Juniper Research issued last summer, which predicted that mobile biometric technologies would be used to authorize $2 trillion in in-store and remote purchases by 2023, marking a dramatic rise from the $124 billion expected at the time for 2018.

A more recent report from Goode Intelligence, meanwhile, predicted that the percentage of mobile purchases performed in-store would rise from 32 percent last year to 46 percent in 2023, with total purchases facilitated by mobile biometrics expected to reach a value of $1.67 trillion per year by the end of the forecast period; though that report did point to particularly strong growth expected in the China, APAC, and India markets.