Consumers will become increasingly likely to make credit card payments via mobile phone in the future, according to a new report.
Buying goods and services with a credit card over a mobile phone is going to become more common in the near future, an IT research firm has suggested.
A new report from Gartner has predicted that the number of people making mobile payments - whether through credit cards, cash or bank accounts - will reach 73.4 million this year, a 70.4 percent jump on 2008's figure of 43.1 million. By 2012, there will be 190 million mobile payment users worldwide, representing upwards of three percent of all mobile phone customers, Gartner suggested, at which point it will be considered "mainstream".
"Momentum in the mobile payment market gathered further in 2008 with a number of high-profile launches of mobile money transfer services in multiple markets, participation of major global institutions in near-field communication (NFC) payment trials, as well as new payment solutions entering the market," said Gartner research director Sandy Shen.
However, she suggested that concerns over credit card and other data fraud could remain a challenge for the future of mobile payments. According to UK payments association Apacs, card fraud has increased over the past year, largely because of "card-not-present" fraud, such as that made over telephones or the internet.
