Wearable Payments: Sizing the Opportunity

by Sameer Joshi or 31-May-2016

Publisher’s “Wearable Payments: Sizing the Opportunity” examines the emerging wearable payments market, evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the current products available to consumers in this space as well as using our proprietary data on consumer attitudes towards wearable technology and potential early adopters of wearable payments globally.

 

Recent developments in the wearable payments market have mostly come about through partnerships between established payments providers and hardware manufacturers. MasterCard has been particularly active in this space, especially after launching its Commerce for Every Device Program in October 2015. This program is an extension of the MasterCard Digital Enablement Service. MasterCard’s payments onboarding service enables partners to build its tokenization and digital wallet services into their products. MasterCard’s wide-ranging approach to wearable payments is likely to give it a strong position in the emerging market, regardless of which form factors prove most popular with consumers.

 

Key Findings:

 

- 25% of consumers globally possess a wearable device of any type (regardless of whether that device is capable of making payments).

- Features and pricing are the two most important factors driving purchases of wearable devices.

- Younger consumers with access to bank accounts are the most ready to adopt wearable payments.

- China is the most immediately attractive market due to its sizable population and high proportion of potential early adopters.

 

Specifically, the report:

 

- Analyzes the major payments-capable wearables on the market in terms of function and attractiveness to consumers.

- Identifies the key drivers of wearable payments adoption among consumers globally and by market.

- Analyzes the demographic and geographic distribution of potential wearable payments early adopters and the best strategies to engage with them.

- Explores the potentially winning strategies that can be adopted by players currently in the wearables market and players looking to enter it.