Industry expectations for mobile payments technology are immobile - report

According to a recent research from Compass Plus, an international provider of retail banking and electronic payments software, nearly a third of the respondents think that mobile payments will go mainstream in their region in the next five years (31.3%). When compared to previous survey results, these findings stood out as previous expectations have consistently stated that mobile payments should be mainstream within 1-3 years. By looking at the results from the 2011 and 2012 research, whose results stated mainstream penetration would occur within 2-3 years and 1-2 years consecutively, we should already have reached a state of mass adoption. However, in the most recent set of results industry expectations have been pushed back further to 2020, the study notes.

The report points out that this trend has also been reflected in respondents’ answers to when NFC and contactless will become mainstream. Back in 2011, the majority vote was that mass adoption would have been reached within two years (29%), however this year’s result show that this was overambitious as respondents now believe mass adoption will occur within five years (41.5%) – seven years behind the original estimate.

Compass Plus has been undertaking research into the industry’s expectations of the payments market since 2011, and this year’s results took in the views of more than 190 payments and banking experts from across the globe.