The growth of mobile commerce (mCommerce) adoption in APAC has drawn the attention of many. Some even predict that it will even contribute to more than half of global trend. The International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasted that this positive trend of mCommerce will also affect the increase if mobile payment in the region, as it predicted that the total volume of mobile payment in Asia Pacific (APAC) will be 124% higher, reaching $1 trillion in value.
The prediction stated that the increasing mCommerce trend encourages the adoption’s growth. Developing countries will enjoy the smartphone adoption explosion. They will surely shift to mobile payment using mobile wallet or bank account, considering that credit card is not that popular in some APAC countries.
Previously, Master Card and Criteo have predicted about the growth of mCommerce in APAC. Both agreed that smartphone penetration factor and infrastructure repair are ones of main reasons why mCommerce development becomes so vast in the region.
As IDC Asia Pacific’s Associate Research Director and AP Connected Consumer Marketplaces Shiv Putcha stated, smartphone adoption has grown faster that banking in the region. The semi-closed wallet scheme innovation, which is connected to bank account, has contributed significant effect to the development of of mobile payment in APAC.
“When we look at the whole area, we see a duality between mature markets like Australia, Hong Kong, and Singapore against developing ones like China, India, and Indonesia. A mature market shows a strong banking and card (credit/debit) adoption level and will walk on the same path as Western economy does with its mobile payment, which focuses on Near Field Communications (NFC) solution. This will be a huge market for solutions like Apple Pay and Android Pay,” Putcha added.
This mobile payment segment becomes BlackBerry’s latest target after previously involving itself in mobile wallet implementation, as it’s currently expanding its BBM Money which has collaborated with a number of merchants.
