PAYMENTS
Mobile payments began as a simple method to digitise credit and debit cards for tap-to-pay transactions. Now, however, it has evolved into a sophisticated ecosystem where the smartphone serves as a universal financial remote control. As mobile wallets have moved beyond their transactional phase, they are now super apps that handle everything from peer-to-peer( P2P) transfers and stock trading to social messaging and micro-lending.
The state – and growth – of the market is defined by massive scale and a shift in consumer trust. The mobile payments market is experiencing rapid expansion, with total transaction value in the digital payments market projected to reach US $ 26.89tn this year, according to research by online data-as-a-service( DaaS) platform Statista.
Yahoo also reports that the mobile payments market’ s boom shows no signs of slowing down either, with it projected to increase from US $ 6.78tn in 2026 to US $ 27.73tn by 2031, at a CAGR of 32.53 %.
This growth is underpinned by the APIification of banking, where open finance protocols allow mobile wallets to pull data from disparate financial institutions
74 May 2026