Mobile wallets

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Mobile wallets are no longer a niche service for tech-savvy users, but the future of the payments industry.

The latest research shows that in 2020, the number of contactless payments in stores using mobile wallets surpassed the number of cash payments worldwide for the first time.

The study notes that overall, the use of cash decreased by 10 percentage points – which is 20% of all payments worldwide.

This is stated in the Worldpay FIS Global Payments Report for 2021. At the same time, the number of contactless payments with a digital wallet at the point of sale is also growing faster than the number of payments made with physical cards.

For example, in Canada, the United Kingdom, Norway, France, Sweden and Australia, cash payments in stores fell by 50% or more in 2020. In turn, in the United States, the total amount of cash payments made in stores fell from $1.4 trillion in 2019 to $1 trillion in 2020.

According to a Worldpay report from FIS, it is predicted that by 2024, cash will account for less than 10% of payments in stores in the United States and about 13% of payments worldwide. At the same time, it is predicted that digital wallets will account for every third payment in stores worldwide, that is, about 33%.

At the moment, the Asia-Pacific region is still the leader in the use of mobile wallets at the points of sale. At the same time, about 40% of payments in all stores in this region are made through contactless payments.

However, in 2020, mobile wallet usage accelerated across all regions and now accounts for about 10% of payment methods in North America, 8% in Africa and the Middle East, 7% in Europe and 6% in Latin America.

In addition, the report says that digital wallet-based e-commerce transactions also grew by 7% during 2020. By 2024, it is projected that "digital wallets will account for more than half of all e-commerce payments worldwide."

At the same time, it is noted that the use of traditional payment methods – bank cards, cash on delivery – will quickly lose its share. They are expected to account for no more than 40% of the payment methods for e-commerce transactions by 2024.

According to forecasts of the Electronic Transactions Association, in 2021 the volume of the global mobile payments market will be $1326 billion (as opposed to $1100 billion in 2020). 

This growth is due to the convenience and security of smartphone payments. Therefore, eCommerce website owners provide customers with the option to use a mobile wallet. This increases the audience and makes shopping more comfortable. As a result, the developers of mobile applications with the wallet function are also doing everything possible to develop these technologies. So users will be able to manage business and personal finances, take loans and deal with the maintenance of transport and housing.

The related cybersecurity trend obliges mobile wallet developers to reliably protect user data. For example, cryptographic information encryption, blockchain technologies, tokenization and biometric authentication can be used for this.

Here are the top five mobile wallet trends in the nearest future: 

• NFC (short-range wireless data transmission technology). It is expected that already in the early 20s. the number of payments using NFC will increase by 74%.

• Biometrics. It makes payments even faster, more convenient and safer. Experts say that by 2021 more than 18 billion transactions will be made using biometric technologies.

• Loyalty programs. We should expect the emergence of digital wallets, which will integrate loyalty programs from different companies. This will allow them to share news and other useful information.

• Artificial Intelligence. Today, solutions based on it allow interacting with customers, detecting fraud and preventing cyberattacks, which only increases the security of purchases.

• Smart speakers (e.g. Amazon Echo, Google Home) They are used to transfer funds, verify the number, etc.