The scale of m-payments worldwide is forecasted to rise nearly fourfold over the next five years to more than USD1.3 trillion (view press release). The predictions follow Juniper Research’s latest report, called Mobile Payments Strategies: NFC, Remote Purchases & Money Transfer 2012-2017. The report found that growth will be driven primarily by sales of physical goods by both remote purchases and NFC transactions. These transactions, which will account for 54% of the total value of m-payments by 2017, will have been bolstered by stimuli such as widespread rollout of NFC support infrastructure and the increased cooperation of operators with the mCommerce space. However, in spite of this growth, the physical goods sales conducted via the mobile phone will only account for around 4% of global retail transactions by 2017.

Juniper Research’s report states that the recent spate of activity across the NFC value chain has marked a turning point, as Google Wallet, VeriFone’s POS terminals and the operator-led ISIS were released. However, it cautioned that for NFC to fulfil its potential, marketing behind the mechanism would need to be scaled up dramatically.

Mobile money has also grown in importance, the report suggests, both as a means of enabling domestic and international money transfer, although in some markets adoption has been inhibited by national regulatory requirements and by a lack of interoperability between services.