m-commerce and mobile money forecast revealed

chart on m-commerce value
Analyst firm Ovum today released statistics on m-commerce market, while telecom industry body GSMA shared details on the mobile money market.

The global transaction value of m-commerce will grow to $693.36 billion by 2019 from an estimated $50.92 billion in 2014, according to Ovum.

The user base for mobile payments will increase to 4.77 billion users in 2019 from 689.99 million users in 2014.

The telecom research report says m-commerce is the biggest in terms of users and transaction value among the three segments covered – m-commerce, person-to-person (P2P) mobile money transfers, and mobile proximity payments.

Ovum forecasts global m-commerce users rising to 2.07 billion users in 2019 from 452.78 million in 2014.

Smartphones with larger screens are driving the m-commerce market. Retailers are optimizing their sites for mobile shopping.

“Smartphones have become a platform that can support the whole shopping journey, from product search and discovery, through comparisons and recommendations, to payments,” said Eden Zoller, principal analyst, Consumer Services and Payments, at Ovum.

Ovum said China will have 370.29 million m-commerce users by 2019, making it the largest m-commerce user base in the world. M-commerce transaction value – fuelled by players such as Alibaba and Tencent — in China will reach $79.36 billion in 2019. China will be the second largest country for m-commerce – behind the U.S.

Mobile money

Telecom industry body GSMA today said the number of active mobile money accounts reached more than 134 million in 2015 — with 30 services having more than one million active accounts and seven services with more than four million.

There are 411 million mobile money accounts today.

With 271 services in 93 countries, mobile money is available in 85 percent of markets where less than 20 percent of the population have an account at a formal financial institution.

More than one billion transactions were processed in December 2015. Mobile money is available in 85 percent of countries where most of the population lacks access to formal financial institutions.

Mobile money market generated nearly 100 million new accounts in 2015, bringing the number to 411 million.

There were 29 cross-border mobile money initiatives connecting 19 countries, with cross-border remittances growing 52 percent, by volume, said GSMA.

Baburajan K