Forrester predicts that the future of mobile wallets will go beyond mobile payments by enabling smarter and more efficient commerce experiences through value-added services. After looking into key players, Forrester found that two mobile wallets — Alipay and WeChat — have evolved into lifestyle platforms for Chinese consumers and have inspired third-party players like Apple and PayPal to transform their mobile wallets into more powerful customer engagement platforms.

Here are additional findings from the new research:

  • Chinese consumers are more interested than US consumers in using mobile wallets. Some 76% of metro Chinese consumers use mobile wallets or are interested in doing so, compared with only 36% of the urban online US population.

  • Mainstream mobile wallets will add customer engagement features. Mobile wallet innovations will happen more quickly in emerging markets with less legacy and competition. However, mainstream mobile wallets will add features to help attract more traffic to offline stores. For example, PayPal added features like “stores nearby” and “order ahead.”

  • Space will open up for third-party providers. Other digital ecosystem players, such as Apple, Facebook, and Google, may think of merging their other customer engagement tools with a mobile wallet. This gives third-party providers opportunities to add customer engagement features and offerings to Western mobile wallets.

Click here for more information, and please contact us if you’d like a copy of this report.