How Big Will Mobile Payments Business Be in 2012?

Predicting how much new revenue can be created in any new business, even one expected to be quite large, in an exercise in assumptions. One has to estimate the volume of activity, and then the revenue for each action, to derive an estimate for total industry revenue. Mobile payments are no exception.


Worldwide mobile payment transaction values will surpass $171.5 billion in 2012, a 61.9 percent increase from 2011 values of $105.9 billion, according to Gartner. 


To illustrate what that could mean in terms of payment transaction fees, if all those gross purchases produced a 1.75 percent transaction fee for a transaction provider, a revenue stream of about $3 billion would result.

The number of mobile payment users will reach 212.2 million in 2012, up from 160.5 million in 2011.Gartner also predicts. Spread over the entire planet, that isn't a huge amount of revenue for all the potential providers.


But the business is just starting.