Mercator: Predicting Mobile Payment Success In Asia

"The degree to which mobile commerce stakeholders can identify the sectors and markets with the highest demand for mobile based payments will determine the success of these stakeholders in a rapidly growing sector of the payments world. Our research on both mature and developing markets in Asia provides insights into both what is happening today and where to look next for mobile commerce development," offers Michael Friedman, Director of Mercator Advisory Group's Emerging Technologies Service and author of this report.

Predicting Mobile Payment Success in Asia provides readers with a view of the Asian mobile commerce landscape from a technological and geographic perspective. Six mobile-based payment technologies are identified and discussed including NFC based payments, online mobile commerce and SMS messaging. These technologies are further illustrated by a review of current and market conditions in China (and Hong Kong), Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan.

The report goes on to identify three hypotheses around predicting the development of mobile commerce markets. First, the relationship between technology penetration and mobile commerce maturity is examined. Second, the report looks at the impact of electronic commerce on predicting mobile commerce development. Finally, the report examines the prevailing operational models observed in the six countries for clues as to the development of some markets over others.

Highlights of this report include:

• An overview of mobile payment technologies including online mobile payment, NFC based payment, SMS based payment, IR payment, digital barcodes, and optics driven payments is provided.

• Six Asian mobile commerce markets including China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan are discussed with regards to market maturity, size and perceived acceptance of electronic payment methods.

• The relationship between mobile market maturity and technological maturity using penetration rates for mobile devices and internet usage is explored.

• We examine the relationship between electronic payment usage and mobile market maturity.

• We look at different operating models for mobile markets and draw conclusions about the success of operator versus bank driven models.