Beauty retailers may want to gear up to support in-store mobile payments, as the value of mobile payment transactions is expected to exceed $314 billion in 2020, according to the latest eMarketer report, “US Mobile Payments Outlook: Strong Growth Forecast for Proximity, Peer-to-Peer Payments in 2017 and Beyond.” It’s brick-and-mortar retailers that are expected to see the highest growth in terms of proximity mobile payment transactions over the next few years.
It turns out that even the prolific growth rate of e-commerce cannot deter the sustainable growth in brick-and-mortar retailing. The report notes that as e-commerce sustains double-digit growth in sales over the next several years, nearly 90 percent of U.S. retail sales will take place in brick-and-mortars in 2020. The difference will simply be that more customers will use their mobile phones for purchases in place of traditional forms of payment: cash and credit cards.
What’s expected to drive the growth in proximity mobile payment transactions? The answer is the expanded availability of mobile payment technology throughout retailers—as they align with technology—as well as consumer upgrades to newer smartphones, which pack built-in mobile wallets. Note that eMarketer’s transaction totals for proximity mobile payments “exclude purchases made using tablets.”
In 2016, alone, eMarketer expects a 183.3 percent increase over 2015 in the total value of U.S. proximity mobile payment transactions, totaling $27.67 billion. The value is expected to more than double in 2017 to $62.49 billion. The data agency also expects that 52.2 percent of proximity mobile payments in 2016 will consist of items priced between $20 and $100.
eMarketer adds, “In turn, the average annual spend per user using proximity mobile payments will continue to grow by leaps and bounds, from over $721 in 2016 to $1,230.94 in 2017 and exceeding $4,133 in 2020.”
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