Over 2 Billion Consumers Will Use a Mobile Wallet in 2019, Study Shows

Nearly 2.1 billion consumers around the world will use a mobile wallet to make a payment or send money in 2019, says a study by Juniper Research.

According to the study released on Wednesday (April 4), the use of mobile wallet will be up by 30 percent from the 1.6 billion users recorded at the end of last year.

In a key battle between mobile wallets and contactless cards, it was revealed that contactless cards account for 98 percent of the transactions by value in Canada. However, in the US, mobile wallets account for 87 per cent transactions.

The study further says that the rapid raise of QR payments in China comes at a cost as they are far more susceptible to hacking than several NFC mechanisms.

“QR code based payments are likely to have significant growth in markets such as India and sub-Saharan Africa, due to the negligible implementation costs,” Research author Dr Windsor Holden said in the press release. “However, their greater susceptibility to alteration to include viruses and phishing scams is likely to act as a major deterrent elsewhere.”

Over 120 billion QR transactions were recorded in 2017 with 97 percent of them taking place in China.

On that note, Juniper Research concluded that PayPal (NASDAQ:PYPL)is the global mobile wallet leading provider followed by AliPay (NYSE:BABA) and Weixin Pay/WeChat Pay.

Here’s a closer look at those companies:

• PayPal: PayPal operates a digital payment system that is present in over 200 markets around the world and enables people to receive money in over 100 currencies.
• AliPay: Founded in 2004 by Alibaba , AliPay is a third party payment platform. At the end of 2017, Alipay had 520 million active users and over 400 financial institution partners.
• Weixin Pay/WeChat Pay: Developed by Tencent Holdings (HKG: 0700), WeChat Pay is a digital wallet service incorporated into WeChat, a social messaging app used by many people Asia. WeChat Pay supports 12 major transactions including CAD. Tencent Holdings reported at the end of 2017 that WeChat Pay has 600 million active users.

While Juniper Research only highlights three companies as global wallet leaders, numbers show that there’s plenty of investment opportunities in the future. The company said that the total mobile wallet spend would touch $5.4 trillion in 2019. Over 80 per cent of mobile wallets will make in store payments in 2019.

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Securities Disclosure: I, Bala Yogesh, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.