Mobile bill payments to grow rapidly, says report

Almost 200 million mobile users will be making bill payments via their mobile by 2017, according to research published today. According to Juniper Research, there is a growing user acceptance of ‘push’ mobile banking and a sharp rise in tablet adoption, which will drive users of transactional tablet banking services. However, the firm did not state their estimates regarding how many users are utilising mobile payment services today.

The report finds that, adoption of mobile bill presentment and payment (MBPP) transactional banking by tablet users will be higher than mobile handset users, especially in developed areas where there is a higher adoption of tablet devices.

There will also be significant migration of purchasing and transaction activity from laptops and desktops to tablet devices, as consumer tablet adoption continues to rise, Juniper Research stated.

“With online payments accounting for a significant proportion of all bill payments, especially in developed markets, MBPP transactions will indeed migrate from the desktop towards tablet devices. Consumers often prefer managing bill payment and transactions via tablet devices compared to smartphones”, said report author Nitin Bhas.

However, with banks bundling MBPP services within their mobile banking platform and additional momentum from easy to use smartphone apps, mobile phone transactional banking usage will quickly increase, Bhas added.

The report also forecasted that the number of mobile banking users will exceed one billion in 2017, representing 15 per cent of global mobile handset users, according to the report. The developed markets of Far East and China, North America and Western Europe will have the highest penetration of banking users in 2017, it stated.