eBay’s CEO, John Donahoe, announced that PayPal is projecting their mobile payments volume to hit $7 billion globally in 2012 after reaching $4 billion in 2011.
Although it will take some time before mobile payments at the point-of-sale reach these numbers, mobile online payments have been realizing strong growth for the past couple of years. In their original projections eBay/PayPal only anticipated $1.5 billion in mobile payment volume for 2011, but this figure more than doubled when PayPal finished the year with $4 billion transacted via PayPal and a mobile device. 2011 brought tremendous growth to PayPal’s total mobile payment volume, far exceeding expectations after posting $750 million globally in mobile payment volume for 2010.
While PayPal is just one company that offers mobile payments their large growth in mobile payment volume from 2010 to 2011 shows that consumers are becoming increasingly more comfortable with shopping and sending money from their mobile devices. In June of 2011 PayPal reported that eight million users regularly made a purchase from their mobile device, and in January 2012 this number more than doubled to 17 million PayPal users. As smartphone penetration continues to increase mobile payments will continue to follow suit.
Again, PayPal is one of many businesses in the mobile payments space and their mobile payment growth over the past two years is not a direct representation of the mobile payments market as a whole. However, PayPal is well-known payment company with a large global user base, and the fact that so many PayPal users have adapted to regularly make purchases from their mobile device bodes well for the future of mobile payments.
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