(Aug. 8): According to research from London-based fintech business Boku Inc, Southeast Asia is the world’s fastest-growing market for mobile wallets, followed by Latin America and Africa and the Middle East. According to a global study on the industry released on Thursday in partnership with Juniper Research Ltd, the number of mobile wallets in use will grow 311 percent from 2020 to nearly 440 million by 2025 in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, reflecting an e-commerce boom. During the same time period, Latin American consumption is expected to increase by 166 percent, while Africa and the Middle East usage is expected to increase by 147 percent.
According to the research, mobile wallets surpassed credit cards as the most extensively used payment method globally in 2019, and growth soared during the pandemic. At the end of 2020, there were more than 2.8 billion mobile wallets in use, with that number expected to rise by 74% to 4.8 billion by the end of 2025.
According to the research, there are two sorts of mobile wallets in the world. Card-based mobile wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, which are more prevalent in developed economies, are one example. The other is stored value mobile wallets, such as AliPay in China and GrabPay from Grab Holding Inc. in Southeast Asia, which are popular in emerging economies where credit card usage is minimal.
There will be 55 stored value mobile wallets in 2020, processing over $1 billion in annual transactions. In the five years to 2025, Pakistan’s SadaPay is expected to be the world’s fastest-growing mobile wallet, followed by Brazil’s Mercado Pago and PicPay.
According to the report, Chinese wallets are likely to have limited impact outside of their home market. Despite Ant Group Co’s Alipay acquiring interests in overseas firms such as mobile money platform bKash Ltd and Tencent Holdings Ltd’s WeChat Pay receiving approval for use in Indonesia in 2020, this remains the case.
“It appears unlikely that they will dominate emerging Asian markets as many once believed,” the research added, noting that their use outside of China was primarily limited to Chinese tourists./n
