It is predicted that by the end of this year, there will be almost 5 billion individuals who are using their mobile phones. A recent study reported that 40% of all users in America were making their mobile payments last year. This is 14% more than in 2014 and I think that by the time of next year it can grow up to 70%. Because of this big growth and also the future potential that smartphones are presenting I think we can look forward to see startups and industry of mobile payments evolving even further in order to meet the ever growing user demands. In order to properly understand how this industry is going to grow we need to understand evolution of mobile payments as well as their history. Through our human history, we as people were always relying on some type of system for paying, purchasing services and goods we needed or wanted.
Have you ever purchased tickets for movie through the phone? Well, first phone purchase happened in 1999 thanks to Telnor Mobil and Ericsson. By the time of 2003 almost 100 million phone users had already made their purchase through mobiles. 5 years later Bitcoin is created which is the first real virtual currency. In 2011, Google released their Google wallet and 3 years later, Apple launched their apple pay. It is estimated that by the year 2024, 90% of mobile users will complete some form of smartphone payment and next year there will be more than 60 billion dollars just in payment sales for mobile platforms.
There are 3 different versions of mobile payments. One is commerce. That is the option of paying when customers are using their online browser putting products in card, ordering and then receiving their services or goods. There are also other payments available with mobile apps. For example, Starbucks has their own app where you can order their coffee. Many pizza makers are also using apps, so you can order specific one. There are also payments happening between users on services for online payment such as PayPal or Skrill where there’s an option of mutual sending of money.
Judging by the current state of mobile platforms in global, I think there’s plenty of room for new unicorns to jump in. All of this is proof that there’s a revolution of mobile payments and it may happen sooner than 2024, when almost anyone who has smartphone will use mobile payment as first choice and maybe completely discard classical way of payment.
