Contactless and Libra powered social payments to drive digital wallet growth

Consumer spend via digital wallets across Europe and North America will increase by 40% this year to nearly $790 billion, according to Juniper Research.

While e-retail will remain the largest contributor to consumer spend, continued migration from cash will see a surge in wallet use at the PoS. This will particularly be the case amongst younger demographics and in the US, where a third of iPhones are now used for contactless payments.

Apple is far outstripping its rivals here, achieving the largest addressable share of banking consumers in seven of the ten national markets assessed. In the online space, the likes of Apple Pay, Amazon Pay and Visa Checkout have also significantly expanded their availability at merchant sites, although all lag well behind PayPal in this regard.

Meanwhile, social payments through wallets will grow strongly, a trend expected to be accelerated in 2020 by the emergence of Facebook’s Calibra wallet and its attendant Libra cryptocurrency.

Juniper Research is, however, less optimistic about prospects for wearable pay wallets. It argues that their limited addressable bases and functional constraints mean they will struggle against converged wallets, providing an extensive portfolio of online and offline payment offerings.