• Banks no longer consumers’ first choice for mobile wallets – New stats from Javelin reveal that PayPal and Visa have surpassed the primary bank as mobile wallet providers. For the past two years, banks have topped Javelin’s customer survey. Now, PayPal (63 per cent) and Visa (56 per cent) are preferred to the primary bank (51 per cent).
• Fintech investment could hit $150 billion in five years – Established banks are preparing for a quarter of their existing business to be wiped out by fintech disrupters, says a new report by PwC. It says investment in fintech companies could hit $150 billion over the next five years.
• $550 billion could be transacted over WeChat this year – Tencent disclosed that WeChat had 697 million monthly active users at the end of December. And Reuters concluded that in January the company paid over 300 million yuan in fees. On that basis, WeChat will handle $556 billion in transactions this year.
• Spending on contactless cards in the UK hit £7.75 billion in 2015 – The UK Cards Association. It says contactless spending in 2015 reached £7.75 billion, which was more than double the preceding seven years combined.
• Visa Europe: “50 per cent of our transactions will be mobile by 2020” – Card network Visa expects that, by 2020, one in five consumers will make a mobile payment every day, and that half of all Visa transactions will come from a phone.
• 1.61bn people will make person-to-person mobile money transfers by 2019 – Telco analyst Ovum says the global mobile P2P user base will increase from 192.66 million users in 2014 to 1.61 billion in three years time. This rise will increase transaction value from $15.22bn in 2014 to $270.93bn in 2019..
• GSMA: 411m people have a mobile money account – More than 1bn mobile payment transactions were processed in December 2015. Trade body GSMA says there are 271 services in 93 countries.
• Venmo handles $1 billion in a single month – US P2P payments app Venmo says users sent and received $1 billion during January. That’s more than 2.5 times the payments volume the company handled in Jan 2015.
• Three billion loyalty cards will go mobile by 2020 – A new study from Juniper Research reveals that more than three billion loyalty cards will either become mobile-only or be integrated into mobile apps within four years. In 2015, the total stood at 1.4 billion.
• UK Paym mobile payment scheme has 3.25 registered users – Britain’s ‘pay a mobile contact’ service Paym has nearly doubled its transaction volumes over the past six months. It now has 3.25 million mobile phone numbers.
• Americans will spend $23 billion by mobile in-store this year – The combined efforts of PayPal, Android Pay, Apple Pay and Starbucks will drive in-store mobile payments in the US up 54 per cent his year. In total, $23 billion will be transacted at physical retail from mobile wallets, says Packaged Facts.
• European mobile wallet revenue to pass 1 billion euros in five years – The combined impact of Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Android Pay and Google Wallet will grow the European mobile payments market by 50 per cent a year, says Smart Insights.
• mPOS shipments expected to reach 245.21 million units by 2022 – The market for mobile POS card readers continues to boom – it will grow 20x between 2014 and 2022, says Transparency Market Research.
• Mobile payments to generate $620 billion this year – The systems launched by Apple and Samsung will grow the mobile payment market by 37 per cent this year, says TrendForce. Its new report says the sector generated $450 billion in 2015, and will gross $620 billion this year.

Mobile Industry/General

• App economy could be worth $101 billion in four years – There was barely any such thing as an app ecosystem before 2008. Now, it’s on its way to being a $100 billion industry. A new report by App Annie contents that the total app economy could double in size to $101 billion by 2020.
• Mobile added $43 billion to Australia’s economy in 2015 – Australians are using mobile to work faster and more efficiently – and that’s adding huge sums to the economy, says a new report by Deloitte. It found that Australia’s economy was $42.9 billion larger in 2015 than it would otherwise have been.
• IoT at retail to generate $53.75 billion by 2022 – The retail sector is preparing for huge changes in its supply chain, customer experience and sales channels – all driven by IoT tech. And the overall impact, says Grand View Research, will generate $53.75 billion in sales within six years.
• GSMA’s ‘sign in with mobile’ service now available to 2bn – Mobile Connect is the operators’ project to encourage consumers to use their mobiles to log in for third party services. Now, it can reach 2bn people. The GSMA says 34 network operators in 21 countries have launched.
• Global mobile data traffic up 400x in 15 years – In 2001 there was barely any such thing as mobile data. Now, traffic is at 3.7 exabytes a month. That’s the headline finding of Cisco’s Visual Networking Index.
• Four in ten smartphone owners regular use voice recognition – Parks Associates’ 360 View: Mobility and the App Economy report says 38 per cent of smartphone owners are now using voice recognition apps, and among the 18-24 age group it’s 48 per cent.
• 934 million people check their Facebook apps every day – Facebook’s financials reveal nearly all of its users access the social network on their phones. In the last quarter, 1.04 billion consumers checked their Facebook accounts on a typical day – and 934 million of them did so via a mobile app.

Handsets & Wearables

• Shipments of wearables set to grow 38.2 per cent this year – More devices, more form factors and more awareness will drive the wearable market to shipments of 237.1 million by 2020. The numbers come from IDC, which says this year’s figure will be 110m.
• Sales of wearables set for 18.4 per cent jump – Vendors will sell 274.59 million smartwatches, fitness bands and other wearable devices this year, says Gartner. The sales will generate $28.7 billion. This represents an 18 per cent jump on 2015.
• Oppo sold 50m smartphones last year – Chinese phone maker Oppo has broken into the world’s top ten after posting year-on-year growth of 67 per cent last year. The company sold 50m smartphones, enough to move it into the top ten smartphone brands worldwide, according to researcher TrendForce.
• Apple controls two thirds of the world’s smartwatch shipments – New numbers from Canalys reveal Apple as the major force in smartwatches – though Fitbit leads the wearable sector as a whole.
• iPhone sales have flatlined at 75m a year – For the first time ever, Apple has failed to increase its iPhone shipments. Its latest financials show device sales stalled at 75m for the year. In spite of this, Apple still posted record quarterly revenue of $75.9 billion.
• Windows Phone sales now at 4.5m a quarter – Microsoft’s latest financials reveal that it sold 4.5 million Lumia phones during the fourth quarter. That’s down 57 percent on the 10.5 million sold a year ago. However, the Surface tablet posted all-time high revenue of $1.35 billion.
• Five million people have a Google Cardboard VR set – While the early adopters wait for Oculus Rift and Vive, Google’s ultra-cheap Cardboard VR headset has gathered 5m users.

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