Strong Growth Forecast For Contactless Mobile Payments

The total number of unique contactless mobile payment users will reach one billion globally by 2024, increasing 60 per cent from 782 million in 2022, says a study from Juniper Research. Increasing consumer demand for convenient and frictionless payment methods will accelerate growth, as consumers only require a smartphone or near field communication (NFC)-enabled device to use contactless payments, thus eliminating the need to carry multiple payment cards. To capitalize on these high-growth markets, the study says NFC mobile payment vendors must encourage consumers to switch from mobile money to NFC payments by educating consumers on the benefits that NFC payments provide and aiding efforts to improve the NFC acceptance infrastructure. The advent of soft POS (point of sale), which enables smartphones to accept NFC payments, will quickly increase contactless acceptance infrastructure due to its lower cost in comparison to traditional contactless POS, which is expensive because of the need for additional hardware.