With 2017 behind us, it is the ideal time to look back and to consider how last year’s developments will impact on 2018.

One notable trend this year will be the continued growth of Mobile Wallets, which are predicted to reach a global value of $3.12trn by 2022, up from approximately $594m in 2016.

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At an annual increase of 32%, this startling growth will necessitate serious development and implementation of digital wallets over the next five years, a process that will begin in earnest in 2018.

Why is that?

Research from ACI Worldwide shows that, in rapidly-growing economies like Asia and South America, mobile wallets have quickly become the dominant payment platform.

For example, 51% of consumers in Thailand claim to regularly pay with a smartphone, while 47% do the same in Indonesia. This is a stark contrast to the UK, where just 14% of consumers regularly use mobile wallets, and the US, where only 7% regularly use their smartphone to pay.

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This can partly be explained by the fact that markets like Asia have bypassed traditional card and payment infrastructures, and taken advantage of technological developments such as increased access to 3G and high in-country smartphone penetration to quickly enable mobile payments.

In the UK, however, existing contactless card-based payment structures have slowed the adoption of mobile wallets, with many consumers not seeing any benefit of using an equivalent technology on their phone.

This could be set to change, however, with new research from WorldPay predicting that eWallets will secure 34% of the payments market by 2021, overtaking established methods like debit cards and driving significant growth in the UK e-commerce and m-commerce markets.

Further, while 36% of US merchants currently accept Apple Pay, a further 22% have plans to accept it in the next 12 months, while 11% plan to do so within 1-3 years.

Mobile wallet growth

PrePay Solutions, in partnership with transactional solutions experts Edenred, has driven the migration of digital payment methods across Europe and beyond.

We’ve already successfully deployed Apple Pay, Android Pay and Samsung Pay with our customers in several European countries including France, Spain, and Sweden, with many more in the pipeline.

We predict that mobile wallets will continue to grow across Europe and beyond throughout 2018.

We have already seen the emergence of new wearable payment technologies like FitPay and payment rings at the Olympics.

This competition, coupled with new mobile wallet market entrants hoping to share in the success of Apple, Android and Samsung, will ensure that eWallets continue to develop in value proposition, adoption and deployment worldwide.

Ray Brash is CEO, PrePay Solutions