Perspectives
The market for mobile money services is on the cusp of explosive growth. This is proved by the pace of recent announcements about using mobile services and applications for mobile banking and payments. Paypal says that downloads of its mobile payment application are experiencing tremendous growth and it attributes consumer adoption of smartphones as a primary driver. Vodafone announced in late June 2009 that six million Kenyans now use their Safaricom (Vodafone-owned) mobile phones to make person-to-person payments less than two years after launch of the service. As of February, just under two million Bank of America customers are using mobile banking. Key players within the mobile industry are aligning themselves to enable mobile money services.
ABI Research recognized early the market opportunities that could result when the mobile phone became the "mobile wallet" and launched its Mobile Money Research Service, which examines a comprehensive range of mobile money services, including mobile banking, person-to-person payments, international remittance, and both NFC and non-NFC enabled mobile commerce, across all value chain participants from operators to banks to application/platform developers.
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