TrendForce: Global Mobile Payment Market Size is Expected to Reach USD 620 Billion in 2016

As major mobile phone manufacturers such as Apple and Samsung are actively seizing the mobile payment business opportunities, TrendForce's Topology Research Institute has calculated that the global mobile payment market size was US$450 billion in 2015, and is expected to reach US$620 billion in 2016, a year-on-year increase of 37.8%. In order to grab a piece of the Chinese mobile payment pie, Apple Pay and Samsung Pay both cooperated with China UnionPay in early 2016, and mobile payment services can be used on mobile phones through software upgrades.

As mobile payment services develop in a diversified manner, the cooperation between participating financial, telecommunications and other industries has accelerated, and industry standards and technologies have matured. This year, the GlobalPlatform organization strengthened the development of the "Trusted Execution Environment (TEE)" specification, greatly improving the security of mobile payments.

TrendForce senior research manager Xie Yushan said that in addition to bank service fees, telecom operator channel fees and third-party payment operator cash flow costs, smartphone and mobile payment related software and hardware manufacturers all play an important role in the mobile payment business opportunities. The main participants in the mobile payment industry chain include mobile phone main control chip platform providers, trusted execution environment security providers, mobile payment application platform providers, mobile phone software developers and mobile phone IC component manufacturers.

Xie Yushan pointed out that the rise of mobile payment will also trigger the growth of fingerprint recognition chips. Fingerprint recognition payment has the advantages of security, ease of use, and high device installation rate. Through the integration of fingerprint chips, security environment, and NFC controller resources, it has become the mainstream application of biometric payment in the world. After China's Alibaba Alipay and WeChat Pay actively introduced fingerprint recognition systems, fingerprint recognition functions have been further promoted and become a standard feature of mainstream smartphones. Topology estimates that the installation rate of fingerprint recognition phones will exceed 40% in 2016.

Financial and retail industries become the first-tier battlefield for expanding mobile payment services

Financial institutions around the world are actively expanding mobile payment services. Xie Yushan said that the adoption of mobile payment methods mainly depends on financial institutions. If banks take the lead and financial institutions work closely with merchants, it will help the development of the mobile payment application market.

Union Bank & Trust in the United States, Intesa Sanpaolo Bank in Italy, National Australia Bank, Yapi Kredi Bank in Turkey, etc. have successively applied to open HCE (Host Card Emulation) mobile payment services. HCE technology directly delivers information originally stored by security components such as SIM cards or microSD cards to cloud servers or mobile phone APP software. Through the NFC controller, mobile payment functions can be completed. It is not limited by telecommunications. Credit card registration can be completed through mobile phones without changing SIM cards. Transactions using virtual card numbers can avoid the risk of card data leakage when swiping the card.

In addition to financial institutions, payment portals have always been the focus of most retailers. Since 2012, Starbucks has integrated payment functions into its member apps, which can be directly connected to mobile wallets to quickly grasp customer preferences and consumption trends. Walmart, a US retail department store with 22 million consumers, launched the Walmart Pay service last year and is expected to be promoted to stores across the US in the first half of 2016; Target also plans to launch its own mobile payment system in the near future to regain the dominance of mobile payments.