Contactless Pay Will Reach New Heights This Year, Study Says

The wallet has a long history, with the roots of the word being traceable as far back as the 1300s. The wallet in its modern form, however, emerged in the 1950s, when the invention of credit cards mandated slots designed specifically to securely house the new form of payment. And while you’d be hard-pressed to find an adult today that does not have a wallet modeled with the standard cash clip or pocket, and room for multiple cards, this could change very soon. The tried and true money-holder’s replacement may be none other than your smartphone.

Mobility tech analysts have long discussed the emerging clout of the mobile wallet that uses features such as radio-frequency identification (RFID) or near field communications (NFC), but a recent development in the field has given the mobile wallet a big momentum boost.  In fact, according to Juniper Research, the number of mobile wallets using contactless pay is expected to reach 200 million by the end of 2016, which marks a 100 percent increase from the end of 2014. The driver of this boost, according to Juniper Research, is Apply Pay.

Released in October, 2014, Apple Pay essentially turns mobile iOS devices into digital wallets with contactless pay capabilities as participating vendors. Apple Pay is further evidence that everything the company touches turns to gold—or at the very least, sparks a gold rush of sorts. Just as the release of the Apple Watch was the starting gun for other smartwatch developers, Apple Pay was followed by Samsung Pay, and Android Pay, among others (It’s worth noting that the adoption of smartwatches may also drive mobile commerce). Likewise, banks are beginning to partner with Visa and MasterCard to implement their own cloud-based, contactless wallets.

This is by no means to suggest that Apple Pay is winning what appears to be a forthcoming mobile wallet war—especially considering some of the mobile pay innovation we’ve already seen from companies such as Uber. Rather, Juniper Research’s findings suggest that what we have long been discussing as a strong possibility has entered the realm of immanent proliferation. Apple Pay was merely the impetus.

Mobile wallets and contactless payments have crossed the threshold, and show no signs of fading into the background. There’s only one direction for mobile commerce to go now—forward.