Mobile Payment Trends 2015!

People today and longer want to walk with their cheques all the way to the bank to make payments or encash them. Mobile technology has enabled even countries in sub-Saharan Africa to be able to receive subsidies and other social security benefits through their mobiles. Today, people pay monthly bills and insurance premiums through their mobiles. In this article, we look at some of the mobile trends that are expected to lead the pack in 2015.

The Numbers

According to the Vision gain payments in mobile 2010-2015 report, there will be 1050 million mobile users by the end of 2015. Also, Smartphone’s in use will surpass 1 billion and double in 2015. This is expected to further grow since consumers prefer to purchase directly from the manufacturer (which is what happens in ecommerce). A statistic:  41% of iPhone owners have made a purchase on their mobile phone.

Newspapers and Quick Service Cafes

Mobile payments in Newspaper publishing (closed-loop mobile payment) have become very popular in the last few years with a large number of users preferring to subscribe magazines and fortnightlies online. Almost all newspaper publishers have Android and iPad apps. With kindle readers increasing, this trend can only be expected to grow further up in 2015.
As for restaurants and cafes, a simple statistic would suffice: $3 billion has been loaded on to Starbucks cards in 2012 and 2 million mobile payment transactions occur every week in restaurants in America alone.

Transportation and Parking

Parking woes have long remained the grouse of urban workers. With the advent of pay-by-text parking, it’s farewell to coins. SMS remains the dominant technology in developing m-payment markets due to the constraints of mobile payment devices and the ubiquity of SMS.
Transport ticketing, needless to say was one of the first to go mobile as customers took to it like a fish to water what with 480 million mobile bar coding passes being issued by the global airline industry. Even in taxis, the dominant mode has been to pay by Smartphone, scanning a QR code.

Vending Machines and M-Donations

Coca-cola, Pepsi and a host of other FMCG giants have already launched vending machines which accept contactless payments made with Smartphone’s. As for m-donations, a precedent has already been set with the U.S presidential election of 2012 enabling people to donate to candidates via text message or a Smartphone app.

Small Business Solutions


Eyeing the growing number of customers who rely on their “Digital wallets”- Credit card numbers stored in a phone app, small business owners are scrambling to find efficient means of accommodating these early adopters without too much cost to their operations or the need to overhaul existing payment systems. This would be one of the major drivers of growth in 2015.