PayPal has doubled its mobile payment volume projection for 2012 to $7 billion.
This comes after PayPal’s expectations for 2011 were exceeded, reaching $4 billion in mobile payment volume. This was a large increase for the company’s original 2011 prediction of $1.5 billion and the $750 million in mobile payments that were seen in 2010.
“Fueling this growth is a combination of the success of our mobile-optimised checkout flows, and the rapid increase in consumer adoption of mobile shopping. We currently have more than 17 million PayPal customers regularly making a purchase through their mobile phone, up from the eight million we reported in June,” David Marcus, PayPal vice president of mobile, wrote on the PayPal blog.
“And tablets continue to play a major role in that adoption. According to recent IBM Benchmark data, seventy-five percent of shoppers this holiday season made purchases on their tablets, the iPad driving the bulk of these transactions.”
PayPal also saw more retailers embrace mobile commerce in 2011. Companies like Starbucks and Pizza Express collaborated with PayPal to enable consumers to scan their phones through to paying at the register to paying on the phone and skipping the line altogether.
“The worlds of offline and online are already blurring, giving consumers a new “normal” for retail. That new normal includes an unparalleled level of convenience,” Marcus wrote.
“Regardless of whether a consumer is behind a desktop computer, on a mobile device, or in a physical store, shopping experiences can happen anytime, anywhere, and in any way. Through PayPal’s safer and easier platforms, we are driving the next generation of commerce and providing a seamless shopping experience across channels to engage consumers where, when and how they want to shop.”