The number of consumers using their mobile phones to make payments will increase strongly this year, as will the overall volume of payments, but the market is still growing slower than expected, according to research firm Gartner. There are different reasons in emerging markets and wealthier countries behind the disappointing growth. In the former, service providers have not adapted their strategies to local requirements, says Gartner, so successes from Kenya or the Philippines are unlikely to be reproduced. In developed markets, companies “are trumpeting the prospects of NFC without realising the complexity of the service model,” says Sandy Shen (pictured), the firm’s research director. Mass-market adoption of NFC payments is “at least four years away,” she says.  The major barrier to adoption is persuading users to change their behaviour and pay with their mobile phones rather than cash and cards.

However, the outlook for 2011 is positive. Gartner says the number of mobile payment users will reach 141 million, which is a 38 percent increase from the 102 million in 2010. And the volume of mobile payments is predicted to total US$86 billion, a 76 percent increase from the 2010 volume of US$49 billion.

The research firm expects SMS and USSD to stay as the dominant technologies for accessing mobile payment services in emerging markets due to handset limitations. In wealthier countries, WAP will remain the preferred technology and the main drivers are payments for app downloads and mobile commerce. WAP will this year account for nearly 90 percent of all mobile transactions in North America and about 70 percent in Western Europe.

Mobile money transfer and pre-paid top-ups are behind the growth in mobile payments in emerging markets, while payments to merchants drive popularity in wealthier countries.