Research Projects Wearables Market to Reach $95 Billion by 2018

In its latest report on contactless payments, Contactless Payments: NFC Handsets, Wearables & Payment Cards 2016-2020, Juniper Research forecasts a rise in the global value of wearable contactless payments from less than $35 billion in 2015 to $95 billion by 2018.

Despite that significant increase in wearable value, Juniper says the 2018 wearable segment will still only represent 2% of value transacted through non-card contactless payments, due to the increasing volume of NFC capable phones on the market.

Juniper claims “the emergence of a range of connected wearables has piqued the interest of NFC stakeholders”. Research co-author Nitin Bhas states: “Apple’s entry into NFC gave the industry a much needed boost, and could well be seen as the tipping point for the technology, but at the same time it sounded the death knell for the mobile operator projects.”

This latest whitepaper provides an evaluation of the contactless payment ecosystem and highlights developments across contactless payment cards & POS infrastructure, contactless mobile retail payments, smart wearable payments and NFC, also forecasts growth for key industry players including ETA member companies Google, Apple and Samsung.

Read the press release from Juniper Research here.